Morgan Wallen - I'm the Problem

Morgan Wallen wants you to know he's hurting. Maybe he wants it too much — his fourth album, I’m the Problem, sprawls over 37 tracks. If you were wondering how to waste two hours of your life in the most meaningless way possible, look no further.

It’s hard to name a bigger male artist in the U.S. right now than Morgan Wallen. His albums sell millions, linger in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 for years, and his songs break historical records. But given country music’s geographical limitations, his dominance is easy to overlook when you’re living outside the States. If a curious listener from elsewhere tries to discover the work of this country superstar, they might just lose faith in America as a whole.

I’m the Problem kicks off with the line: “Gonna burn the whole place down” — Wallen might have meant bore instead of burn, considering this album is a sluggish, unimaginative, self-repeating exercise in monotony. The songs lack any spark, and the oppressive runtime feels almost like a threat — you ever dreamed of a country album with 37 tracks? No? What’s with the strange look?

The one thing that’s indisputable: Morgan Wallen is a master of clichés. Painstakingly, he has managed to stuff every country stereotype into one album — girls, beer, whiskey, trucks, cars, and bros hanging out. Occasionally, I’m the Problem reaches such absurd heights that it makes you wonder if these songs were actually generated by AI.

For the entire runtime, Wallen either mourns a lost love or gets wasted. His auto-tuned vocals at times barely resemble his actual voice, and in some tracks, his wailing is almost physically painful to endure. Other times, he switches to his bad boy persona, the kind of guy who’ll call you at 3 AM saying, “Hey, you awake? I’m hooking up with this new girl, can’t talk.” And it doesn’t matter that he was the one who called first. And it doesn’t matter that you blocked his number — he’s calling from her phone now.

Wallen invites a few guests, but the only woman on the album is Tate McRae, ironically a Canadian — a nationality currently being vilified by Donald Trump’s supporters (coincidentally, Wallen’s target audience). Their collab, “What I Want”, drowned in auto-tuned mumbling and bargain-bin trap beats, is so comically terrible that you’ll laugh out loud. It’s impossible to believe an actual human wrote this — it has the eerie precision of AI.

Speaking of trap beats, they’re a unique kind of curse here. The 40-second “Interlude” sounds like a middle school SoundCloud demo, while “Eyes Closed” flings you back to the worst of 2016 pop — the era of The Chainsmokers ruling the charts. Wallen’s son allegedly said he liked “Eyes Closed” — at this point, this is starting to feel like child endangerment.

Where the trap elements are missing, the instrumentals are just lifeless. You hear a song, and it vanishes from your memory immediately. Any track with half-decent arrangements is ruined by Wallen’s robotic vocal processing. Country music trapped itself in this cycle, birthing Wallen as its doomed product. Every song is the same song. It’s shocking that an army of songwriters and producers put this together, yet not one person in the studio ever said: “Guys, this sounds like total ass. Maybe let’s not.”

Lyrically, the album circles around one tired theme — because Wallen has nothing new to say. When he’s not singing about love, you wish he’d go back to love songs — because “Come Back as a Redneck” is some deranged nonsense wishing city folks would die and reincarnate as country dwellers. A track meant to mock big-city habits somehow backfires spectacularly — it ends up sounding dumber than Facebook comment-section threats, which is saying something.

This idea spills over into “Working Man’s Song” — we work hard, get paid little, hate our bosses. Yes, we know. Any other topic? No? Oh, there is — alcohol worship. On “Genesis”, Wallen compares his booze addiction and one-night stands to the Bible’s Adam and Eve. Morgan??? What??? Someone cut this man off, this is unbearable.

Of course, there are moments you could technically call enjoyable. At least “Superman” and “Skoal, Chevy & Browning” don’t land in the unlistenable pile. “Love Somebody” is a standout only because of its synth-pop production and uncanny resemblance to Dua Lipa’s Training Season. The problem is, from this entire two-hour album, only 7-8 minutes feel remotely tolerable.

Ultimately, I’m the Problem is an audio diary of that drunk guy at the next bar table, ranting for two hours while you desperately want to go home. This is Geneva Convention-level cruelty, ancient Chinese water torture. “Guess I’m a Little Crazy,” Wallen sings in the final track — and honestly, hard to argue with that. At least the album title wasn’t lying.

1.9/10