The Shady Side Of Morgan Wallen
Like so many popular music artists these days, Morgan Wallen got his start on a TV singing competition. As he told People, he was just 20 when his mother signed him up to audition for the NBC's "The Voice," where he turned heads (and those spinning red chairs) during the 2014 season. "I didn't even know what 'The Voice' was," he recalled. While he was eliminated, he re-emerged just two years later with a new record deal in hand, a hot new single, and the burning ambition to make his mark in the country music scene.
It didn't take him long to achieve that goal. Since then, he's become one of the genre's hottest young artists — and also one of its most prolific. Of the 65 singles he's released since then — yes, 65! — eight of them have landed in the Billboard top 10, with 2023's "Last Night" hitting No. 1, and then spending 16 weeks in that top chart position. Meanwhile, his 2021 LP, "Dangerous: The Double Album," spent 110 nonconsecutive week in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart, the longest run ever by a solo artist, and second only to the soundtrack for "My Fair Lady." Wallen, it's clear, is no flash in the pan.
Yet hand-in-hand with all that success has been a seemingly endless stream of scandal and controversy. To find out more about that aspect of his career, keep on reading to explore the shady side of Morgan Wallen.
He was kicked out of Kid Rock's bar and then arrested
Morgan Wallen and a few pals were bar-hopping in Nashville in May 2020, winding up at Kid Rock's Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N' Roll Steakhouse. The party got a little too wild, reported The Tennessean, when Wallen allegedly kicked some glass objects, which led him to get unceremoniously kicked out of the bar. Out on the street, Wallen reportedly harassed people who were walking by, engaging in verbal altercations with them. Nearby, police officers watched, encouraging Wallen and his group to move on. He did not. "Officers gave [Wallen] several opportunities to walk away with his friends, but he refused to walk away," noted the official arrest warrant. Determining the intoxicated country singer was "a danger to himself and the public," officers eventually placed him in custody; he was charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct.
Wallen responded to his arrest in a since-deleted tweet. "After a couple bar stops, we were horse-playing with each other," he wrote (via CMT). "We didn't mean any harm." As Country 102.5 reported, when Wallen appeared in court a few months later, all the charges were dropped.
"I'm gonna be completely honest, the whole night's kind of fuzzy for me," Wallen admitted during an appearance on "The Bobby Bones Show." He also confirmed that Kid Rock, no stranger to controversy himself, didn't bail him out after his arrest — but that he and the "Bawitdaba" singer later hung out together.
Ignoring COVID protocols got him kicked off SNL
In October 2020, Morgan Wallen was announced as musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," a breakout performance that promised to catapult him from country music stardom into the mainstream. At that time, the show had just returned to its iconic Rockefeller Center studio for the first time in more than six months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Days before his scheduled appearance, social media videos revealed Morgan attending a crowded party, no face masks in sight. Given that "SNL" had instituted strict safety protocols in order to return to the studio, exec producer Lorne Michaels had no choice but to cancel his appearance. "We're just living in a different time, everything is scrutinized," Michaels said in an interview with NBC's Willie Geist, revealing he'd tapped Jack White as an eleventh-hour replacement. Wallen responded in a since-deleted Instagram video, displaying both disappointment and acknowledgement that he'd screwed up. "My actions this past weekend were pretty shortsighted," he said (as reported by The Washington Post), apologizing for what he'd done. "I respect the show's decision because I know that I put them in jeopardy," he said. "I take ownership for this."
There were no hard feelings, though; Wallen finally made his "SNL" debut in December 2020. He even appeared in a sketch poking fun at the whole situation, with host Jason Bateman portraying Wallen from the future, who'd returned to that fateful party to warn himself of the repercussions.
He disappointed fans by dropping out of a music fest
When Morgan Wallen was busted on social media for partying after a University of Alabama football game, his planned "Saturday Night Live" musical debut wasn't the only performance to be impacted. As it turned out, the night before he'd been scheduled to hit the stage on "SNL," he was supposed to headline the Rome River Jam in Rome, Georgia. Shortly before that show, however, he announced he was cancelling the performance; as he stated in the now-deleted apology video he'd shared on Instagram (as reported by Billboard), he needed to take some time off to "work on me."
The festival, noted Billboard, was a unique and experimental event meant to revive live music performance after months of pandemic shutdown. Fans came together while remaining socially distanced from each other, watching the performers from within their own individual pods, while stringent safety guidelines had been put in place. The festival, the outlet added, was the biggest country music event since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, aside from "drive-in" concerts, in which music fans watched the show inside the confines of their own vehicles.
Wallen was replaced as headliner by Lee Brice. "Morgan Wallen's performance at Rome River Jam will be rescheduled to May 1, 2021," a message from the festival stated. "All purchased tickets will be honored for this date. On behalf of Morgan and his team, we sincerely apologize."
His racial slur was captured on video
As it turned out, Morgan Wallen's "Saturday Night Live" controversy was just a warmup for a far bigger scandal. In early 2021, TMZ shared a shocking video of Wallen that had been captured on a neighbor's security camera, as he and a group of friends returned to his home, apparently intoxicated. At one point, Wallen can clearly be heard blurting out the N-word.
It didn't take long for Wallen to become engulfed in backlash, with fellow country artists including Mickey Guyton, Maren Morris, and Kelsea Ballerini blasting him on social media. Wallen quickly apologized. "I'm embarrassed and sorry," he said in a statement to ET Online. "I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better." That did little to quell the outrage, so he attempted to explain his actions in a video he posted to Instagram. "The video you saw was me on hour 72 of 72 of a bender, and that's not something I'm proud of either," he said, blaming his inebriated state for his use of the racial slur.
He also felt industry repercussions when numerous radio conglomerates throughout the U.S. pulled his music from their stations, a lengthy list that included the country's largest group of radio stations, iHeartMedia. To make matters worse, his record label, Big Loud, also responded. "In the wake of recent events, Big Loud Records has made the decision to suspend Morgan Wallen's recording contract indefinitely, the label tweeted.
He was banned from the American Music Awards
By October of 2021, the controversy surrounding Morgan Wallen's racist language had yet to fade in the public's perception. That was clear when producers for the annual American Music Awards announced it had reached a decision regarding his participation in that year's award show. As Deadline reported, even though Wallen had received two award nominations — for favorite male country artist, and favorite country album — he was banned from attending the ceremony. "As his conduct does not align with our core values, we will not be including him on the show in any capacity (performing, presenting, accepting)," read a statement from production company MRC Live & Alternative, explaining that nominees are selected based on their performance on the Billboard charts. However, the statement also acknowledged that Wallen might be invited to future AMAs, provided he'd taken the appropriate steps. "We plan to evaluate his progress in doing meaningful work as an ally to the Black community and will consider his participation in future shows," the statement added.
The following year, Diddy was announced as host and producer of the American Music Awards. Speaking with Page Six, the rapper/music mogul decreed that Wallen was now welcome to attend the show. "We're un-canceling the canceled," he said, adding, "I'm here to forgive, to unify, to celebrate, and to have everybody be free."
In hindsight, given the recent spate of disturbing allegations against Diddy, being uncanceled by him no longer seems quite so beneficial.
Cheating claims from his ex
Morgan Wallen became a father in 2020, announcing the arrival of his son, Indigo. He identified the mother of his child — whom they'd come to nickname "Indie" — as KT Smith. Fans at the time were curious about their relationship status; as it turned out, they'd already broken up by the time Indie was born.
As for what split up the relationship, Smith told all in a 2021 blog post. As she recalled, they began chatting via SnapChat, and started seeing each other in 2016. Morgan popped the question fairly early on in the relationship, but their engagement didn't last long. "We broke off the engagement but still dated consistently for about two years, living with one another for about three — but that third year was rocky," she wrote. "The kind of toxic, trauma bond you hear about on TikTok." She described their relationship as being "off and on," and blamed their eventual breakup on his stratospheric rise to stardom during that period. "But being thrown into the spotlight at such a young age is obviously going to come with some bad decisions," she continued. "He wasn't the most faithful."
At first, raising their child together wasn't an easy ride. "Co-parenting with Morgan at the beginning was extremely difficult because it was very new to both of us and I was still bitter towards him," she admitted, but confirmed she'd been able to move past her hurt feelings in the best interests of their child.
Another ex accused him of being a womanizer
KT Smith's allegations that Morgan Wallen cheated on her over the course of their relationship aligns with strikingly similar claims from another woman that he dated. In February 2022, Page Six reported that Wallen and model Paige Lorenze had split after dating for approximately a year. "She suspected he was cheating on her with multiple people," a source told the outlet. "After they went public, Paige started getting all these messages on Instagram from girls saying, 'I was with him. We slept together.'"
Shortly after that report, Lorenze herself seemingly confirmed those claims in a cryptic message apparently referencing Wallen's infidelity. "One of the most underrated ingredients for having a good life is a clear [conscience]," she wrote in a post shared via Instagram Story, as reported by Page Six. "To know you aren't out here doing people wrong, and hiding who you are lets you sleep peaceful at night," she continued. "Karma is real, energy is contagious."
If Lorenze's name seems familiar, it may be because she was in a short-lived relationship with scandal-ridden actor Armie Hammer back in 2020. Judging by an interview she gave to Vanity Fair about Hammer, her relationship with Wallen may not have worked out, but was a far cry from what she'd experienced with Hammer. "And then I just started to feel really unsafe and really sick to my stomach about things," Lorenze said of the actor, adding, "he's kind of a scary person."
He was sued over a last-minute concert cancellation
Fans had assembled at the Vaught Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi to watch Morgan Wallen in concert on a spring night in 2023. Minutes before the show was scheduled to start, however, a message flashed on the venue's video screens to announce the show had been cancelled. "Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately Morgan has lost his voice and is unable to perform tonight," read the message, reported the Mississippi Clarion Ledger. Local law firm Kilpatrick & Philley advised fans not to accept the refund that was offered. "A refund of the ticket price is insufficient to compensate us for our actual out-of-pocket expense," the firm wrote in a Facebook post.
Irked concertgoer Brandi Burcham took that legal advice. "Even if ticket prices are refunded, no offer has been made to reimburse concertgoers for other out-of-pocket expenses they incurred in connection with the concert cancellation, including transportation, lodging, food, merchandise sales, transaction fees and other such expenses," Burcham's lawsuit declared, via Page Six. Burcham withdrew her suit — but only, her attorneys explained, because they planned to refile it as a class-action suit representing all the concertgoers affected.
The plot thickened when a TikTok video emerged, in which a security guard at the venue claimed Wallen was too inebriated to perform, and had to be taken out of the venue in an ambulance. The company that employed that guard, reported Page Six, issued a statement via Instagram Story dismissing his comments as "false claims."
Morgan Wallen was arrested for hurling a chair off a rooftop bar in Nashville
It's clear that Morgan Wallen has demonstrated plenty of shady behavior over the years, but nothing came close to what he did in April 2024. According to WSMV4, Wallen was on the rooftop bar of Chief's, the Nashville establishment owned by country music star Eric Church, when he spontaneously threw a chair off the side of the six-story building, and then laughed about it. When the chair crashed to the street below, it narrowly avoided hitting two Nashville police officers who were on the sidewalk below. Wallen was placed under arrest, and charged with several felony counts — with the seriousness of the charges belied by Wallen's smiling face in the mugshot taken after his arrest. He was subsequently released from jail on a $15,250 bond. "He is cooperating fully with authorities," Wallen's lawyer, Worrick Robinson, declared in a statement.
As legal expert David Raybin told People, the charges against Wallen were no joke, and could result in a maximum of six years in prison. However, Raybin didn't believe he'd actually wind up serving that much time. "It's probably a maximum of two years assuming he was not put on probation," Raybin explained.
Meanwhile, the folks running Church's rooftop bar — Rodney Scott's Whole Hog Rooftop BBQ — altered the marquee after the incident. As a photo posted on Facebook indicated, the sign boasted the tongue-in-cheek addition, "Our pigs fly, our chairs don't."
A source said that Morgan Wallen 'doesn't know when to stop'
When examining the various incidents that have demonstrated the shady side of Morgan Wallen, one element seems to be interwoven throughout many of them: alcohol. Wallen has acknowledged his own curiosity over whether he may have issues with substance abuse, something he addressed when he appeared on "Good Morning America" to address his drunken use of a racial slur back in 2021.
During that interview, Wallen revealed that he'd checked himself into rehab. "For 30 days, I spent some time out in San Diego, California, you know, just trying to figure it out," he confessed. "Why am I acting this way? Do I have an alcohol problem? Do I have a deeper issue?" he mused.
Since then, Wallen has never said much more about the subject beyond that. However, an anonymous source purporting to have insider insight into the situation believes that Wallen's love of a good time may have gotten out of control. "Morgan is generally a nice, fun person to hang out with, but when he gets going he doesn't know when to stop," the source told People after Wallen's headline-making felony arrest. "Morgan and alcohol is a problem and it's been a problem that keeps coming back around."