‘Cancelled’ country star Morgan Wallen’s Australian return to headline CMC Rocks 2023
Having spent much of the past two years ‘cancelled’ by the US country music establishment, Morgan Wallen will headline the CMC Rocks festival near Brisbane this weekend.
Having spent much of the past two years “cancelled” by the US country music establishment, one of the genre’s biggest stars will headline a major festival near Brisbane this weekend.
On Sunday night, Morgan Wallen will close CMC Rocks QLD before 23,000 fans, marking a triumphant return for the 29-year-old after he first performed at the festival as a little-known artist four years ago.
In February 2021, footage emerged of the Tennessee-born singer-songwriter using a racial epithet with friends while entering his Nashville home at the tail-end of what he later described as a “72-hour bender”.
His mea culpa was swift: “There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever,” he said in a statement at the time. “I want to sincerely apologise for using the word. I promise to do better.”
Yet his cancellation was swifter: in the wake of the video surfacing, Wallen’s music was banned from country radio stations and removed from streaming playlists. He retreated fromview, checking himself in for 30 days in alcohol rehabilitation.
Even as the popularity of his music surged – including 10 weeks at No.1 on the Billboard chart with Dangerous: The Double Album – his record-smashing release was deemed ineligible for the 2021 Country Music Awards. That year he donated $US300,000 to the Black Music Action Coalition.
Despite being kept in the sin bin by recording industry gatekeepers – including zero nominations at the Grammy Awards, even as he has outsold practically every other US artist in recent years – Wallen released his third album this month.
Titled One Thing at a Time, it has set the Billboard charts ablaze: its 36 tracks were streamed 498 million times in the US last week, making the biggest streaming week ever for a country album and the fifth-largest week ever, behind only Drake and Taylor Swift.
Five of its songs occupy the Billboard top 10, including Last Night at No.1, and the album debuted at No.2 on the ARIA chart last week, behind Harry Styles.
For festival promoters at CMC Rocks – which runs from Friday to Sunday – booking Wallen again was a major coup; at home, he’s filling stadiums.
“We had him in 2019, the last one we’d done before Covid,” festival director Jeremy Dylan told The Weekend Australian. “He wasn’t a huge star; he only had one slot, in the early afternoon – but just watching the audience engage with him then, it was pretty obvious where that was going to go, and that we would need to bring him back. He was definitely the most requested artist, and we’ve managed to deliver that for this year.”
Alongside fellow US headline acts Zac Brown Band and Kip Moore, Wallen’s presence on the line-up helped sell all 23,000 tickets on the first day, bucking a trend in 2023 where established multi-genre festivals such as Bluesfest and last month’s Laneway are struggling to reach capacity.
Some genre-specific events, however – like CMC Rocks and this month’s three-city heavy metal tour Knotfest Australia – have sold out by catering to strong market niches.
After headlining at CMC Rocks on Sunday, Wallen will perform sold-out concerts at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena on Tuesday and Wednesday, and at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena next Friday and Saturday.
