Morgan Wallen’s continued chart domination highlights Country Music’s racist core

County music fan support for Morgan Wallen is growing after a profanity-riddled rant was caught on tape.

More than 80% of country music radio stations stopped playing all of Wallen’s music, his label Big Loud suspended him, and booking agency WME dropped him after a neighbor’s security camera captured the rising country star hurling profanities and a racist slur during a drunken rant on February 2nd.

Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music all also pulled Wallen from their official playlists. But his music remains available on the platforms and his songs are higher than ever in their charts.

Still #1

For their part, country music fans are showing their growing support for Wallen by streaming and buying his music in record numbers.

Despite the fallout, this week Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” continued to rule the Billboard 200 chart notching its 5th straight week at #1, and his 2018 release “If I Know Me” entered the Top 10 for the first time ever.

“Dangerous” is only the third album to spend five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 in the last 12 months. The other two were Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” at 8 weeks and Lil Baby’s “My Turn” at 5 weeks.  They were also the two most popular albums of 2020, according to Billboard and MRC data.

Few Speak Out,

While the music industry machine has shunned Wallen for now, very few country music artists have taken a stand.

Jason Isbell, whose song “Cover Me Up” appears on “Dangerous,” said that he would donate his earnings from Wallen’s album to the NAACP’s Nashville chapter.

Mickey Guyton, the only Black female country singer signed to a major label, tweeted  “The hate runs deep “How many passes will you continue to give?” and “So what exactly are y’all going to do about it. Crickets won’t work this time.”

MORE: The music industry rejected Morgan Wallen’s racist slurs, but Country Music fans did not