Even Morgan Wallen Thinks Chris Young’s New Music Sucks
There might not be a more disappointing artist in the history of country music than Chris Young. He’s got an excellent voice, and some of his early songs and albums really set him on the right path to having a stellar career. But chasing trends, muting the twang, and dialing up the pop sounds have made Chris Young one of the most milquetoast artists currently making “country,” with one forgettable single and album after another not even fit for the Rascal Flatts catalog.
Chris Young just released a new album on October 17th (who knew?), and yep, it sounds just like the last few snoozefests, full of pop songs being pushed to the country market that probably won’t even sell or chart well. What a waste of talent. How bad has it gotten for Chris Young? Even Morgan Wallen doesn’t want to listen to that $hit, and that’s saying something.
It can be very revealing of someone’s true opinions when you hear what they say when they think nobody is listening. Morgan Wallen got in a lot of trouble previously for being caught on someone’s Ring doorbell camera saying a naughty word. In this instance, it’s audio from bodycam footage when Wallen was being arrested from the notorious chair-throwing incident on April 7th, 2024 that has folks in a tizzy.
Wallen was charged with three felony counts for hurling a metal chair off the roof of Eric Church’s Lower Broadway bar in Nashville, Chief’s. The chair landed very near two Metro Nashville police officers, and if it had hit someone, would have probably caused serious injury. Wallen later plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, and was sentenced to seven days in a DUI education center, as well as two years of probation.
Segments of the bodycam footage from the arrest have been trickling out over the last few weeks, and the most recent dump has raised the cackles of Chris Young fans. While in the back of the patrol car headed to the pokey, Morgan Wallen can be heard saying to the officers, “Please do not play Chris Young on this motherfu**er,” and later, “Oh hell no, he’s terrible.”
In recently surfaced bodycam video from Morgan Wallen’s 2024 arrest, the Wallen can be heard talking with the responding officer in the back of the patrol car.
— Country Central (@CountryCentral) October 27, 2025
At one point, Wallen comments on Chris Young, telling the officer, “he’s terrible.” pic.twitter.com/DG2zKECHD8
Not to give a ringing endorsement to anything Morgan Wallen says, but having to listen to Chris Young’s music handcuffed in the back of a squad car just might be in violation of the provisions in the Bill of Rights against cruel and unusual punishment.
Along with some other revelations from Wallen on the bodycam footage—including that Wallen initially tried to claim he didn’t even throw the chair—the other notable thing is how chummy the officers were with Wallen. It’s a stark contrast from how a lot of other folks would have been treated in a similar scenario.
That’s not how officers in Nashville acted with Chris Young just a few months before the Morgan Wallen chair incident. During a compliance check by Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers at the Tin Roof in Nashville where Young was drinking, the singer started to ask the compliance officers questions, and then proceeded to follow them around the bar as they checked the IDs of other patrons.
When Chris Young confronted the officers, one of them pushed him, resulting in Young tumbling to the ground, and the officers arresting him for disorderly conduct, assaulting an officer, and resisting arrest. When video came out of the incident, it immediately exonerated Chris Young of any wrongdoing, and the charges were completely dropped. Young was standing up for the other bar patrons who the compliance officers were being aggressive with.
Overall, Chris Young seems like a good, upstanding guy—much more than Morgan Wallen.
Maybe Wallen saying Chris Young’s music sucks is the pot calling the kettle black. But when even Morgan Wallen is going off on your music like The Dude in The Big Lebowski did The Eagles, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your career trajectory.
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October 27, 2025 @ 6:26 pm
I really liked his first couple albums. A very nice Waylon Jennings cover in there.
October 27, 2025 @ 6:32 pm
Morgan Wallen redeemed himself with that comment.
Chris Young doesn’t receive enough attention for how badly he sold out his musical integrity.
October 27, 2025 @ 6:49 pm
There’s a couple of songs that hint at a return to the old Chris, but even they revert to his chosen new sound after one verse. Very disappointing.
On the bright side, Billy Currington’s singing actual country again after his brief flirtation with whatever the heck he thought he was doing on his last album. Nothing earth-shakingly traditional on the new one, but he was never a full-out traditionalist, just a guy who could craft a decent mainstream country song when in the right frame of mind.
October 27, 2025 @ 8:34 pm
Billy Currington’s cover of Lucille is excellent! Always liked his voice even though he hasn’t released the best music.
October 28, 2025 @ 7:28 am
Cody, I always thought it was better than Kenny Roger’s version and that’s saying something. It’s easily one of my favorite Billy Currington songs.
October 27, 2025 @ 6:52 pm
To this day,im not sure i have ever heard a chris young song. Oh well
October 27, 2025 @ 7:04 pm
Check out “Gettin’ You Home” and “I Can Take It From There.” Very much in the Conway Twitty tradition of steamy country seduction songs.
October 27, 2025 @ 7:24 pm
I had heard gettin you home. Not a big fan. Its not terrible and id prob dig it more in a bar or something. His voice just doesnt do it for me.
October 27, 2025 @ 9:31 pm
I don’t care for Morgan Wallen, but damn if this isn’t funny. I’ve been chuckling about it for the last several minutes. And, unlike Wallen, I’m not even drinking.
October 27, 2025 @ 9:33 pm
Dead Clock is right twice a day should have thrown in Easton Corbin and joe nichols too.
October 28, 2025 @ 8:37 am
Joe Nichols is nowhere near as much of an offender as Chris Young. Even some of Nichols’ worst albums include some solid country songs, even if nothing earth-shattering
October 27, 2025 @ 10:41 pm
Tbis article made my night. Couldnt stop busting up reading through it. The most annoying song Chris Young put out recently was a song he used David Bowie’s Rebel Rebel song to make a single. Just awful. Seems this latest fad with mainstream country artists to butcher old pop songs for new singles.
October 28, 2025 @ 12:32 am
There’s one out now that literally starts with the words “Girls just wanna have fun …” I’ve never listened to the whole thing, nor do I know who the singer is. It’s not Young, though. Then there’s the usually dependable Scotty McCreery slumming with the reunited Hootie and the Blowfish on a song that recycles Hootie’s “Hold My Hand.” Just awful.
October 28, 2025 @ 3:50 am
A few years ago, I predicted someone would do a remake of “Hold My Hand”, but I didn’t think Scotty McCreery would get Darius to sing on it, too.
October 27, 2025 @ 11:46 pm
I enjoyed Young’s first few albums and thought them pretty good. Great voice. Great future, I thought. Sadly, for me, his subsequent albums have been disappointing. The worst for me is his latest one. He seems to have lost his way.
October 28, 2025 @ 3:32 am
That’s hilarious. Best squad car video since Randy Travis.
October 28, 2025 @ 4:07 am
The most puzzling career trajectory in country music history. From golden-voiced traditionalist to directionless hack begging for extended radio play by being willing to release anything and everything. AM and I’m Comin’ Over were tolerable but everything after that has been vomit-worthy, including this horrible attempt to go “country” again that he just released.
Sometimes you can’t recapture a sound you never should have abandoned. I wish him luck, but the evidence thus far says he’s done.
October 28, 2025 @ 6:50 am
Perhaps the arresting officers should have played CY’s new album while Wallen was in their squad car to shock some sense into ol’ boy !!!!!!
October 28, 2025 @ 8:07 am
Morgan Wallen’s music is indistinguishable from Chris Young’s.
October 28, 2025 @ 1:23 pm
Eh, I strongly dislike both their music overall……………but there are very clear differences stylistically between those two.
Young’s music is often major-key (thus more upbeat-sounding) and thematically heavy on a combination of “Aw shucks!” good ol’ by romanticism and horny come-on cliches. Wallen’s is heavily minor-key (thus more sad-sounding) and thematically heavy on laments about girls being nothing but trouble yet still missing the one that got away, and drinking heavily to try and drown the sorrow and knowing he should probably stop but he just can’t help himself cliches.
October 28, 2025 @ 9:08 am
Well he did get David Bowie a number one country hit and gold record with the song Young Love and Saturday Nights. The riff was taken from Bowie’s song Rebel Rebel and Bowie was given a songwriting credit for it. Other than that he’s a no for me.
October 28, 2025 @ 10:37 am
He and the officer also talked about really liking Josh Turner
Glad to know Morgan Wallen’s got some good taste lol
October 29, 2025 @ 8:14 am
What specifically did they say?
October 29, 2025 @ 8:47 am
The officer listed Josh Turner in his Top 3 artists
Morgan mentioned Long Black Train and that he listened to him when he was 7
Then Morgan said “You love Josh Turner?”
Officer responded “Oh yeah” and then Morgan said “Yeah, I love him too”
October 29, 2025 @ 11:15 am
Thanks, Tom!
If only Wallen followed in Turner’s footsteps, but worldwide fame doesn’t live in those soles.
October 28, 2025 @ 1:02 pm
Chris Young’s career arc absolutely is one of the single most underutilized, botched ones in terms of potential quality, alongside Easton Corbin in my eyes.
Both of them have (or I should say had in Corbin’s case) some of the best male vocals in mainstream country, and both started their careers with a genuine neotraditional sound. Granted Corbin’s songwriting was generic and laundry list-y from the onset, but with a little experience and honing of the craft possibly alongside more seasoned songwriters I was hopeful he’d steadily improve.
Instead Corbin got markedly worse across the board by his third studio album by shamelessly pandering to the bro-country trend hook, line and sinker several years too late……………and those misguided decisions hardly even paid off commercially for him in that he was only able to squeeze two Top Ten Country Airplay hits out of that of which neither had any genuine, organic buzz outside of the radio format. And from there he just fell into complete mainstream obscurity.
At the very, VERY least Chris Young got more mileage out of trend-chasing than Corbin did. Still: definitely a Pyrrhic victory as a whole in that I’m confident he would be much more respected and revered and also still have produced more hits if he had remained true to himself. I mean: I get that it must have stung when the title track to his album “Neon” was a huge chart flop for him at the time and it undoubtedly probably drove him and his label to do a 180 pivot towards a complete change in style………….but then you have to remember “I Can Take It From Here” (another neotraditional-sounding single from that album that was more accessible than “Neon”) was released right after that and that became a pretty convincing bounce-back hit for him. So I think they flat-out learned the wrong lessons from that era.
October 28, 2025 @ 5:01 pm
I’m of the opinion that the huge success of “Famous Friends,” his duet with Kane Brown, pretty much slammed the door on a return to anything resembling traditional country for Chris. Everything he’s put out since has been either a brainless ditty or an over-the-top power ballad. Not that all power ballads are bad, especially with a voice like his. I do like “Voices,” for example. But his new single off the new album is just godawful boyfriend country with rock guitars.
October 30, 2025 @ 5:45 pm
I think had “Famous Friends” not successfully become a career hit for Young, his decision-making as an artist would have been substantially different after the fact.
Because prior to that hit he was looking to be treading water with “Drowning” flopping and his three singles preceding that being rather low-impact beyond radio as evidenced by their Billboard Hot 100 peaks.
I definitely think “Famous Friends” provided a sense of false security in that his listeners wanted more fare just like that from him, although the reality is much more likely that listeners just liked that particular song as well as the idea of a collaboration with one of the biggest names at the time (Kane Brown).
I’m willing to bet he and his label thought they had another slam dunk smash with “Young Love & Saturday Nights”, the next “Famous Friends”, as evidenced by the fact he had an album and a tour ALSO named after that single……………..so they must have felt terribly disappointed by its pathetic #94 peak on the Billboard Hot 100 and atrocious sales.
October 28, 2025 @ 3:01 pm
I’ll still take Chris Young over Morgan Wallen any day, if only because Young can sing circles around any other contemporary male pop country vocalist. That said, I too agree that his music’s devolvement into generic pop country has been very disheartening.
“The Man I Want to Be” is a solid album. But now it’s looking like the man he really wanted to be was Chris Daughtry, not Chris Young (which is not a knock on Daughtry, but he ain’t country).
October 28, 2025 @ 5:02 pm
Morgan Wallen didn’t kill anyone. Will his name ever be mentioned in an article here without the obligatory “qualifiers” of mentioning his problems?
Funny enough the last band I played with did a request of ‘7 Summers’ by Morgan Wallen and I was impressed with the Maj7 chords and I liked the singer’s rendition even though I don’t like Wallen’s version. Wallen’s voice and the mixing and production of his tracks is so fucking obnoxious-sounding. (Is that the only way to mix songs to have them sound good thru an external iphone speaker?)
October 28, 2025 @ 9:56 pm
“Will his name ever be mentioned in an article here without the obligatory “qualifiers” of mentioning his problems?”
I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to avoid when the context is what he said while in the back of a squad car on the way to getting booked for multiple felonies.
October 29, 2025 @ 6:17 am
It’s not illegal to say the N-word.
October 28, 2025 @ 6:10 pm
This is great in how it’s part news item, part Trigger funny story. It’s also really nice to have a full-fledged fake news funny story from time to time.
October 29, 2025 @ 1:35 am
Wait a second. Nashville police play country music on the radio in the squad car while transporting a perpetrrator/suspect back to the station?
Do they also break their donuts in half and gently hand-feed a piece to the cuffed suspect’s mouth to keep him comfy and nourished?
This thing seems like a joke.
October 29, 2025 @ 4:29 am
Chris Young’s “Voices” EP was one of the best true country records I have ever listened to. And I still listen to it all the time, his voice nearly brings me to tears every single time. But he has never, in his entire career since then, done anything like that great EP. Nothing. I have lost hope that he will ever do anything like it, and it is very sad.
The same can be said of several different artists, who made it big by doing traditional country and then immediately switched to a totally different style, leaving the fans who made them big having nothing new to listen to ever again from that artist. Kenny Chesney being a prime example, he did great traditional country on his first album and then switched to the Jimmy Buffet “Margaritaville” style and has never gone back to traditional country again.
October 30, 2025 @ 7:16 pm
Chris Young and Easton Corbin both came out strong around the same time.
It’s a shame it didn’t last.
October 29, 2025 @ 5:53 am
Morgan Wallen’s music may be indistinguishable from Chris Young’s,but Chris is a handsome cowboy,while Morgan’s looks are,well,not exactly studly.Also,I don’t recall C.Y.’s uttering the “N” word or hurling chairs through hotel windows.
October 30, 2025 @ 9:52 pm
Chris Young is an RnB singer, and he should lean into that because he’s got a super voice.