Hi, everyone. Brendan Abernathy here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of the new Morgan Wallen album, I'm the Problem.

Morgan Wallen is a Tennessee singer-songwriter who is now on his fourth full-length LP. He is one of the biggest names and voices in the world of country music today, and I would say mainstream music in general, considering how much crossover success many of his recent releases and singles have had. Which you could say is especially the case for his new album here, which is the number one album in the country.

Now, personally, I didn't really get much from Wallen's last album. Certainly not enough to withstand its 111 minute run time. But out of the gate, this new record here seems to be doing even better commercially and is somehow even longer. My curiosity got the better of me, and I decided, you know what? Let's give it a shot.

Now, to really start this review off, let me commend this on its greatest strength and weakness: its focus. Let's take the album's opening title track, which, instrumentally, is like this combination of modern day, pristine, overproduced country music, combined with a theatrical, progressive rock atmosphere that bands such as Pink Floyd used to specialize in, over which Wallen delivers a pretty bitter tirade where, frankly, he's getting very defensive over whether or not he is the problem in a relationship. As Wallen struggles to come up with some retort or comeback that's actually going to land. Oh, yeah. If I'm so bad, how come you keep sticking around? Well, if I'm the problem, you might be the reason, the reason for the problem, which is me.

Man, I would hate to be on the other end of that. I would be so totally owned.

Anyway, you could call this track a Musical Thunderstorm of Cope, a toxic romantic scenario where Wallen is doing his best to survive through it and, I guess, reason his way out of it. And save for a handful of tracks here and there, that is pretty much the bulk of what this album is about: less than ideal romantic vignettes where Wallen can be seen bragging about getting better after a breakup, or reminiscing on old times in a relationship when things were maybe better, keeping a distance from new women he's with so he doesn't catch feelings, kicking himself over a breakup that he now regrets, wanting a woman that he doesn't have. Also, trying to make an ex jealous in his way of doing that is by making out with another woman in front of her. Yeah, Morgan's really putting her in the cuck chair there.

Now, obviously, there's nothing inherently wrong with writing about relationships, about breakups, even doing a whole breakup album. But nearly two whole hours of it is a bit goddamn much, especially when after the first hour, it just feels like Wallen is openly penning about every romantic experience he could have possibly had at some point in his life, maybe even fabricating a handful of them just in order to cover every base that he can in the hopes that Spotify listeners will stumble across that spare track on the album that they relate to on some level. Girl broke up with guy just like me.

But as nondescript and as general as some of these tracks can run, sometimes in Wallen's lyrics, there is at least a respectable amount of specificity to make things personal, showing he puts at least some thought into what he's doing. Even when he is operating on painfully faulty logic, like on the track "What I Want" featuring Tate McCrae, where he seems to unironically state, "And you ain't got to worry about no trust issues with me / I got them too, I got them too." Which, to be honest, is exactly the relationship scenario in which you should be worried about trust issues. Trust issues don't just cancel out when both people in a relationship have them.

I digress.

Even when I think the melodies on this record are sharp or Morgan's writing is snappy, it's often ruined by godawful production that is just so bland, toothless, and sometimes very derivative of just super mainstream wash, rinse, repeat, rap caviar type hip hop production, to the point where some tracks on this thing barely sound country at all. Like the interlude cut in the first half of the record, which is like this very slow rap beat that's super woozy, sees Morgan's pained crooning on top of it as well. Then there's "Eyes Are Closed", whose booming 808s and super dreamy, acoustic guitars feel like a few shades away from an instrumental Juice WRLD would be on top of normally.

What's worse than all of this, though, is just how heavily manipulated Wallen's vocals are across almost the entirety of this album, because much of the time they are pitched, layered, and treated in such a way to where Morgan's singing, it sounds like it's just super artificial or even AI.

Take the chorus vocals on the second track of the record "I Got Better", for example, where Morgan's vocals are just so beyond fucked. I feel like I'm listening to a red neck robot singing underwater. And this isn't even the worst example of the vocals on the record. There's also "Miami", whose background vocals sound like a weird chorus of aliens. Yeah, it's like a terrible AI country trap fusion where Morgan sings about some of his favorite things about Miami, one of which, I guess, is that he can just carry his gun around everywhere. Yeah, it's just strange for a record that is about so many personal romantic trials and tribulations to sound so inhuman and just lacking in almost any instrumentation that sounds anything other than just regimented and formulaic or repetitive and uninspired.

I mean, in a way, I could see why this album has gone number one, because in a lot of ways, I feel like it shares more in common with your average mainstream hip hop pop album that would go number one than your average country album. It's just further proof that mainstream music is becoming more and more and more homogenized.

To dig deeper into the record, though, not every song is about relationships. However, I think Wallen struggles to dig up anything that is truly interesting or compelling when waiting outside of those waters, like "Skoal, Chevy, and Browning", which is a endearing trip down memory lane, where Wallen describes getting some advice at a very young age from his uncle Joe while they're out hunting. In concept, a cute and quaint idea. That would be – if the song itself didn't sound like a goddamn advertisement for the brands that are referenced in the chorus.

There's also "TN", which is supposed to be this musical ode to Tennessee, but instrumentally, it couldn't sound more far removed from the state. I mean, the production on this one basically makes it sound like a goddamn dreamy synthpop number, which what the hell does that have to do with Tennessee?

There's also "Number 3 and Number 7", which I swear to God, I'm not kidding you, is pretty much an ode to drunk fucking, driving and speeding while doing so, then wrapping the truck around a tree. I mean, sure, there are lyrics about how we get more second chances than we deserve, but the feelings of regret are barely there. For the most part, this experience, which could have killed somebody else, sounds more romanticized than regretted.

There's also "Working Man Song", which is actually maybe the one bright spot in the midst of tracklist. Yeah, sure, on this track, you have more godawful vocal manipulations that make the song pretty much unlistenable. But in a few spare bars, Morgan does actually provide a bit of class consciousness, which I think we also get to an extent on the track "Come Back as a Redneck" featuring Hardy, which the song's lyrics are pretty much about telling off this guy who was born rich, lives in the city, might look down on others who are of a lower class than him – which, yeah, fuck that guy. That guy sucks. But isn't wishing when he dies that he comes back as an average working person as a punishment, an insult to your audience?

Beyond that, there's a lot of Morgan doing corny allusions to his spirituality, which much of the time, in my opinion, run pretty thin, considering how much sin this record is doused in, or whether Wallen is trying to have a moral epiphany on the song "Revelation", or on the track featuring Post Malone, them saying that they're not like Jesus in a lot of ways, but most importantly, that they're not coming back to a relationship. They're not coming back, and Jesus will.

Then finally, I should probably address just all the goddamn drinking on this record, which I understand, it's a country album. Whiskey is going to come up as a topic. Beers are going to come up. But it's to the point on this album where it's actually borderline disturbing and concerning, especially when you get to tracks like "Whiskey in Reverse", which reads like an after-school Christian PSA about alcoholism, which, of course, in this track, the drinking is ruining a relationship. And Wallen has messed things up so badly, he's envisioning ways in which he can un-alcoholism his life. "You'd be back in in the driveway / You'd be unsaying I'm leaving / I'd be pulling my fist from the drywall / Watching my bloody knuckles start healing."

To finish things off, "I'm a Little Crazy", I think, is actually and legitimately the only from front to back enjoyable song on the entire album. Not only did I think the lyrics work on this one, were actually witty and endearing about the ways in which Wallen is, yes, a little nuts, a little crazy, a little unhinged, but the world that we live in is pretty unhinged too, which, fair. It's a legitimate acoustic ballad, where Wallen's singing is very solid, mostly untouched, and the instrumentation sounds very nice and pleasant and organic, too, without all of these bells and whistles and crap and just pop and trap bullshit hanging in the background, making it not like a country song, which, again, I'm not against genre fusions in concept, even in the instance of country music. But the fusions we're talking about in this instance are the blandest and most agreeable and nonspecific sounds and ideas in popular modern country music today being fused with the blandest, most agreeable, most commercial nonspecific ideas in pop and hip hop music, too.

So yeah, bland production, uninspired songs and songwriting, too many goddamn tracks, especially tracks that are about the same dang thing. Vocals that are messed with so much and altered so much, they're basically unlistenable. And all in all, that just culminates into one of the worst musical experiences and most draining musical experiences I've had this year, which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 1 on this album.

Anthony Fantano, Morgan Wallen, Forever.