Album Review – Morgan Wallen’s “I’m The Problem”

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photo: Spidey Smith


#530 (Contemporary Pop Country) on the Country DDS.

Morgan Wallen’s 37-song I’m The Problem predictably debuted as the biggest album in all of music. And barring brief blips if/when Zach Bryan or Post Malone release new records, I’m The Problem will remain at the top album of the country albums charts for the next two years or longer, defining what many modern ears consider country music, fair or otherwise.

One of the reason’s Morgan Wallen’s 35+ song albums have found such strong reception in American culture—including far beyond the borders of country music—is because they work like genre fluid mix tapes all on their own. You listen to a Wallen album, and you can hear Bro-Country, contemporary pop country, even traditional country, along with ample songs fair to characterize primarily as pop, rock, and hip-hop. It’s this “all things to all people” aspect that has made Morgan Wallen’s music carry such blanket appeal.

But with I’m The Problem, that’s not exactly the experience. This album feels less like an album full of songs that cover the vast array of popular American music forms with stark variations in between, and more like each individual song attempts to capture those various music forms simultaneously, resulting in a grayish goulash of a mono-genre sound for many of these tracks. I’m The Problem sounds like 37 slightly different versions of the same song over and over.

Wallen rather famously told Theo Vonn ahead of I’m The Problem that it would feature less “trap beats” than his previous projects. This is statistically and categorically incorrect. You definitely heard electronic beats on his 2023 album One Thing At A Time, but you were actually surprised when some tracks that seemed to call for more contemporary production were met with conventional drums. On I’m The Problem, trap beats seem to be employed gratuitously, even when they don’t fit the mood. It’s not every track that features trap beats, but it might as well be.

There’s just not the contrast of sounds between songs. Wallen’s previous two albums both had a few tracks you could characterize as true country music. The closest thing that passes for that here is “The Dealer” with ERNEST. But even this is just more an acoustic song than a country one. On the previous two album, you also had songs you could characterize as deeply introspective like “Born With a Beer in My Hand” and “Don’t Think Jesus.” I’m The Problem fails to deliver here too. One Thing At A Time tried to tell a redemption story. The recurring theme of I’m The Problem is backsliding, even when Wallen is trying to excuse his behavior to his son in the song “Superman.”

Don’t mischaracterize this album as Bro-Country though. Aside from the collaboration with HARDY called “Come Back As a Redneck,” list-like lyricism is virtually absent from this record. In fact, this is one of the things that lends to the album’s striking uniformity. The consistency bleeds into the lyrical content as well. Aside for many of the “feat.” collaborations and some other noteworthy tracks, the vast majority of these songs are all about the same thing—a sob story involving a woman, a broken heart, and a blood alcohol level well past the legal limit. This is established with the opening song and debut single from the album, and then it’s wash, rinse, and repeat.


Meanwhile, all the sounds are sent through this synthy, ambient production bed that blends all the signals together. It’s like the soft focus of a movie camera captured in audio form, no matter if it’s Charlie Handsome, Jacob Durrett, Joey Moi, or a combination of them in the producer chair. Even when a guitar part attempts to step out, it’s so blended into the mix, you only catch a whiff of what it’s attempting to express. Then add the tendency to double and triple up Morgan Wallen’s vocal signal, and run it through a batch of sweeteners that is sure to include some Auto-Tune, and everything just blurs together.

None of this is to say that you can’t listen through, and select some tracks that you can tell will be favorites, or that don’t touch on a little something deeper. “Number 3 and Number 7” with Eric Church definitely has a swagger and sharp lyrical hook. Not surprisingly, it’s the only song written by less than three people on an album that features 52 different songwriters, including 12 songs that have six songwriters or more, and one song “Love Somebody” that has an insane eleven songwriting credits.

“Jack and Jill” also features clever songwriting, playing off nursery rhyme verbiage to tell a tragic cautionary tale. “Whiskey In Reverse” co-written by HARDY also has a smart perspective, and more passable, organic production to it. Incidentally, you can always tell a HARDY song when revenge fantasy creeps into the lyrics. That’s the case for the final song on the album “I’m A Little Crazy” that offers, “I keep a loaded .44 sittin’ by my bed, for the jeepers and the creepers who ain’t right in the head.”

And of course, there are plenty of pretty bad songs too, though none more worse than Wallen’s “tribute” to Keith Whitley “Miami” (read rant).

Those who love to pontificate over music often attempt to assign some sort of philosophy or political purpose to Morgan Wallen’s music and his approach to it, like a Variety writer who said he codes MAGA. But that’s dramatically overthinking it. Morgan Wallen isn’t trying to express anything through this music. Watching extended interviews with him on podcasts and such reveals a rather unremarkable guy just cashing in on his success, and seeming not to think too much about anything.

Morgan Wallen has veered straight into controversy numerous times, released now three of these massive albums that refuse to trim the fat and feed fuel for fair criticism from cynics and critics alike. Yet he continues to succeed by being just enough of an ambiguous figure, and being strangely relatable to lots of people. But I’m The Problem does feel like like a backslide from a notorious backslider, with Wallen and his production crew taking his popularity for granted, and seeming to put out an album where the effort to distinguish the songs from each other needed to be taken more seriously.

Will that assessment ultimately play against Morgan Wallen’s generational success? We’ll see. It’s never been smart to bet against him, or anticipate the public seeing through the shallowness of his music, or to look past Wallen for something more meaningful and interesting in the country sphere. But no superstar run lasts forever. Only time will tell if I’m The Problem‘s inferior effort eats into America’s Wallen appetite.

3/10

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Two of the better tracks:



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