Wallen releases several songs, few hits

By Josefina Cuddeback Collegian Freelancer

What’s better than Morgan Wallen’s chart-topping, 30song album “Dangerous”? His much-anticipated, 36-song monstrosity “One Thing At a Time,” obviously.

No, not really. Despite setting an all-time record for most streamed country album in one day on its release day with a staggering 52 million streams, Wallen’s 2023 album can be summed up easily: some winners, a lotta fillers.

Wallen covers all of the bases with his 36 songs, ranging from undiluted Nashville to more individual pieces paying homage to some of the greats of old country music. This range once again solidifies Wallen’s universal appeal across a multitude of demographics. His albums always have something for all, as well as several across-theboard favorites. Country music aficionados and only-in-summer, radio-country listeners can for once agree on a music opinion, e.g. that “Chasin’ You” is actually a pretty good song.

Wallen stays consistent with the album, serving both catchy Nashville country and some older-sounding songs. He strategically dropped a three-song teaser one month out from the release date to keep excitement up. In the intervening month, “Last Night” topped the Hot Country charts and hit no. 3 on the US Billboard Hot 100. While the song is undoubtedly the most catchy on the album, several other songs from the main release deserve recognition.

The album boasted several songs that, although popular, lacked the musical genius that Wallen is capable of. Closely following “Last Night” in streams is the title song, “One Thing at a Time.” Although catchy with smart lyrics, the song stops short after the feelgood element and is nothing earth-shattering.

“Cowgirls” channels Diplo x Wallen with a distinctive, fun pop-country feel, but the chorus pretty blatantly rips off CoJo’s hit song “Long Live Cowgirls.” “I Wrote the Book” promised to serve a raw and autobiographical set of lyrics, but rambled on repetitively and unresolved for its three-minute duration. These songs fall into the distinctive set of Wallen’s decent, add-to-thesummer-playlist songs. Love them, next please.

Wallen’s talent is more subtly displayed in some of his less ostentatious pieces. “Man Made a Bar” featured country legend Eric Church and won out with unique lyrics whose creative composition is reminiscent of Church’s own distinctive flair for songwriting.

Listeners found themselves under the lights in “98 Braves,” which, unlike the writer’s love life, connected with a fair ball as it swung for the fences. “Keith Whitley” did its namesake proud with a country love ballad which mourned the fleetingness of good things like love, whiskey, and the ‘80s country singer who passed on too soon.

Between the winners to the losers, one thing is evident: Wallen could have done in 15 songs what he did in 36. With the rise of Spotify and other streaming platforms, the high number of songs in an album is more lucrative because artists are paid based on an “album unit” of a certain number of songs.

Re-releasing many previous singles allowed Wallen to make them relevant again and recycle their money-making ability as they are streamed countless times over with the rest of the album. While critique surfaced about the album’s similarity to Wallen’s previous work “Dangerous,” “One at a Time” was still enormously lucrative, and proved an intelligent way to monetize music in an ever changing music industry.

Lucrative or not, “One at a Time” succeeded in both pleasing old fans and gaining the Tennessee native new followers. Some might critique the amount of tracks dropped at once, but ultimately the album produced several winners, and fans are not disappointed.

I am part of the fraternity formerly known as Phi Mu Alpha, which has recently been re-named Alpha Mu Phi, that’s cool. I was song master until this semester. I’m part of the college orchestra, and I’m part of the Joy Quartet within the music department. I don’t sing here– I can hold a pitch but that’s about it.

Are you involved with any other clubs on campus?

I’m vice president of the philosophy honorary, Phi Sigma Tau, and I run a Bible study in my house.

Who has been your biggest inspiration in the musical world?

One of the people who consistently always wows me–and I hate that this is so cliche, because everyone knows him– is Yo-Yo Ma. But, there’s a reason why everybody knows him. He does literally everything. He’s played everything. I reference his recordings and his performances constantly, even if I’m not agreeing with every decision he’s making. He’s just so obviously mastered his craft. I’ve actually been to see him live three times now. He’s mind blowing.

If you could do a song collaboration with anyone, who would you do it with?

Jacob Collier. Outside the world of classical music, he might be my singular favorite musician on the planet right now. He is a literal polymath with music. The only limit to what he can do is his own imagination, with the technical mastery of like 3 billion instruments. They’re all really quirky instruments, too. His vocal range is nuts, and he just has so much fun doing it. He’s so, so,

One of my perennial alltime favorites is a piece from Tchaikovsky. His Variations on a Rococo Theme, Opus 33. It’s got the whole emotional gamut. It’s whimsical, then it’s playful, then it’s manic, then it’s very somber, and then suddenly, it’s not. It’s kind of faking you out the entire time. It’s so cool to be able to take that in as an audience because you’re sort of carried along for the ride. It’s so cool to be able to create that effect as a performer and to kind of know what goes into that, which makes the learning process so much fun to bring the piece up. I think that’ll just be with me forever.

Do you have a senior recital coming up?

My senior recital is on April 15 at 7p.m. There are three huge pieces, and not really anything more, because they are huge, and it’s gonna be great. I’m a little terrified, learning them all right now. I’ve started them all already, but getting them up to speed is going to be a gargantuan task. We’ll see how it fares. One of the pieces I’m playing is actually a sonata with a harpsichord and Dr. Tacke will be playing the harpsichord with me. One of them is a Brahms Sonata with piano. The piano part is insane and Chloe Tritchka will be playing it. She’s a senior music major too. And then the other one is a Chinese piece written about three years ago for just solo cello, and that’s nuts because you’re doing all sorts of things you would never do normally with a cello. There’s guitar picks, there’s body percussion. It’s insane.

If you could have dinner with any three people, who would you have it with?

Marsilio Ficino, Gustaf Mahler, and Matthew Gaetano.

Do you have any hidden talents?

I can clap really fast. It’s something I learned when I was 12 as a way to pass time, and I don’t do it ever anymore for any reason, because there’s literally no use for it. But I don’t know, I haven’t run into anyone else who can do that. So I guess that counts.

What’s one piece of advice you would give to your freshman self? Calm the frick down. Literally, just calm down. I was not the most stable individual, and I think I just kind of learned to take in where I was and appreciate what I was doing and sort of be present with myself and everyone I knew. That would have been great. It was a wild time. That was a wild time. But that’s the first thing I would say.