I’m The Problem

For all the melodic polish and concision of his songs, which rarely broach the three-minute mark, Wallen’s albums read like brain dumps—several, ever-less-succinct drafts of the same “I’m not sorry” text, bobbing aimlessly across a boilerplate backbeat. .... Sometimes, the overwhelming number of cooks in Morgan Wallen’s kitchen do land somewhere ingenious.

He has a bristly persona and history of not-great acts that can bleed into some listeners’ perceptions of him — and it isn’t helped by lines like “Baby I can’t wait to see the look on your pretty face, when I break your heart in two,” which appears on the blithely spiteful poison-pen letter “Kiss Her in Front of You.” But his polished (if slightly dour) country-rock is, as a representation of the form, well-crafted and hooky while not being immune to the occasional stylistic left turn.