On March 3rd Morgan Wallen, country music singer-songwriter released a new 36-track album. From whisky and women to church and red dirt roads, Wallen has crafted an album with the help of forty-nine co-writers to express his life and character. Said by other critics to have “reflections of Tennessee realness” embedded in his music. Though there was a countdown and excitement from Wallen fans, most were not ready for an hour and 36-minute album release. On January 30th Wallen released 3 tracks including: “Last Night”, “Everything I Love” and ” I Wrote The Book”. Unbeninced to his fans it would gain a whopping thirty-three more songs a little over a month later.

Tennessee-born and raised, “Man of the South,” circles around the same classic modern-day country music topics. However, there was more mention of the bible, and a notable mention of another country song, “Miami My Amy”, embedded inside Wallen’s new song “Keith Whitley”. In this breakup song, Wallen pays a tribute to Kieth Whitley, who died prematurely at the age of 33 because of alcohol abuse. In this song, Wallen states “The things I love got a way of gettin’ gone too soon…kinda like good whiskey, Keith Whitley and you”. Overall, it’s quite a clever song but basically because of the reference to alcohol and a girlfriend who left.

Overall, the album contained more heartbreak coping and lonely songs about messing up relationships than what might have been expected. Though some songs lacked as much meaning as they could have. A couple of songs seem as if they were added to beef up the album as surely they knew before releasing them they were not going to be his new or greatest hits. 

Eureka College students take opinions of the new albums in a variety of ways. Wallen is arguably such a big-name artist that even those who don’t listen to the country music genre have heard some of his songs or plunged into the entire album. Carlos doesn’t consider himself a country music fan but said he didn’t mind the album or listening to Wallen’s music because it reminds him, “of something that would play at Texas Roadhouse” After listening to the whole album he gave it a 6.5/10 because “some of the songs were pretty repetitive and sounded very similar”. Which seems to be the opinion of most noncountry music fans. Xander was a big fan of a handful of songs from the new album including; “98 Braves”, “Man Made a Bar”, “Last Night”, and “Dying Man”. “For his work, it’s very similar to Dangerous (Wallen’s previous album)” said Xander. It will be interesting to see what songs become the most popular out of the album. 

Relativity or enjoyment seems to be something people are talking about on social media, especially for the song titled “Last night”. There have been many, women in particular, on social media making jokes about how they can not relate to the songs featured in the playlist at all as they are happily married or in the most healthy relationship of their life. However, they have this catchy breakup song stuck in their head. So, regardless of level or relation, listeners should give the whole album a listen, or at least a song or two, to form an opinion for themselves.