Tragic Details About Morgan Wallen

It's no secret that Morgan Wallen catapulted to stardom as one of the hottest acts in the world of country music. Since first emerging on the scene as a contestant on "The Voice" during the show's 2014 season, Wallen went on to take Nashville by storm. Jon Pareles, chief pop music critic at The New York Times described Wallen as "the biggest country star of the 2020s — and one of the biggest stars in pop, period."

Indeed, Wallen's success is undeniable. In 2023, his album "One Thing at a Time" was the most-streamed album of the year. The album also spent 18 weeks in a row at the top of the Billboard 200 chart, tying country superstar Garth Brooks' "Ropin' the Wind" for the country album to spend the longest time at No. 1. In addition to winning 11 Billboard Music Awards, his One Night At A Time World Tour broke attendance records.

Wallen is also something of a rarity in the country milieu — an artist who tends to generate as much controversy as he does hit records and the recipient of multiple headlines for a variety of bad behavior. As a result, he's experienced both the heights of stardom and the depths of its dark underside, which has had some sad repercussions for the singer and songwriter.

If there's one thread that runs through the continual reports of Morgan Wallen's various controversies, it's that the man truly seems to enjoy a party. That was the case back in May 2020 when he was imbibing in a Nashville hot spot, Kid Rock's Big Ass Honky Tonk Rock N' Roll Steakhouse. Things took an unfortunate turn when he allegedly kicked some glass objects that shattered. According to The Tennessean, these actions led him to be thrown out of the bar. Once on the sidewalk, police observed the intoxicated singer getting into altercations with people who were walking down the street. "Officers gave [Wallen] several opportunities to walk away with his friends, but he refused to walk away," read the arrest warrant, as reported by the outlet. Finally, the cops felt that Wallen had left them no choice but to take action. Police deemed him to be "a danger to himself and the public" and subsequently arrested him.

Wallen later responded to his arrest on X (formerly Twitter), claiming that he was bar-hopping with some friends when their horseplay got out of hand. "We didn't mean any harm, and we want to say sorry to any bar staff or anyone that was affected," Wallen wrote in a since-deleted tweet (via CMT). 

Facing charges of public intoxication and disorderly conduct, Wallen appeared before a judge and prosecutors dropped the charges, Country 102.5 reported.

In late January 2021, TMZ reported on a recently emerged video in which Morgan can clearly be heard drunkenly using the N-word. As Wallen quickly discovered, ignoring a television show's pandemic protocols is one thing, but overt racist language is a whole other level of controversy. He was slammed with backlash, condemned via social media by country artists Maren Morris, Kelsea Ballerini, and Mickey Guyton, with the latter tweeting, "The hate runs deep."

Wallen issued an apology, telling TMZ, "I'm embarrassed and sorry," he wrote. "There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever." That was followed by a lengthy video he posted to Instagram. According to Wallen, alcohol was primarily to blame. "The video you saw was me on hour 72 of 72 of a bender, and that's not something I'm proud of either," he said. "Obviously, the natural thing to do is to apologize further and continue to apologize because you got caught, and that's not what I wanted to do," he added. 

It was clear that he'd come to comprehend the severity of his actions when he told his Instagram followers he was working hard to do better. "Who knows if I'll be able to live down all the mistakes I've made?" he added, "but I'm certainly going to try."

The repercussions of Morgan Wallen being captured on video uttering a racial slur didn't end there. His record label, Big Loud, issued a statement revealing that he was being suspended from the label "indefinitely." The label's parent company was in full agreement. "Republic Records fully supports Big Loud's decision and agrees such behavior will not be tolerated," read the statement shared to X.

Then again, as Rolling Stone explained, Wallen's suspension may have been more noise than anything else. "A suspension itself effectively does nothing," Karl Fowlkes, a music industry lawyer and university professor, told the magazine. As he explained, suspending Wallen allowed the label to distance itself from Morgan without actually taking any concrete action, and that "simply shelving an artist is a PR response."

Meanwhile, an anonymous attorney offered a cynical take that was, sadly, proven to be right on the money when the singer was reinvited to "SNL" just a few months later. "[Wallen] had a drunken night out where he used the 'N-word.' Unfortunately, we still live in a country where the country music market will forgive that more than once," the lawyer said. 

In July 2020, Morgan Wallen announced via Instagram that he'd become a father, celebrating the arrival of newborn son Indigo Wallen. The child's mother is KT Smith, a social media influencer whom Wallen began dating in 2016 after meeting via Snapchat. 

It was later revealed that Wallen and Smith had split up. In a blog post she published in late 2021, Smith spilled all the tea about their relationship. They began dating, she recalled, and got engaged just a few months later. "We broke off the engagement but still dated consistently for about two years, living with one another for about three — but that third year was rocky," she wrote. "The kind of toxic, trauma bond you hear about on TikTok."

By their third year together, she characterized their relationship as "off and on," revealing they'd see each other when he returned from touring, while she would also go on the road with him. "But being thrown into the spotlight at such a young age is obviously going to come with some bad decisions," she continued, conceding that the temptation Wallen encountered as his star rose proved too much to resist. "He wasn't the most faithful," she wrote. Her pregnancy, she revealed, came right as their relationship was ending, but that they'd come to an agreement about co-parenting their son.

In April 2024, Morgan Wallen was once again placed under arrest. The circumstances were as bizarre as the repercussions were serious, with Wallen taken into custody after he hurled a chair off a rooftop bar in downtown Nashville. As WSMV4 reported, Wallen was on the roof of Chief's, the Music City watering hole owned by fellow country star Eric Church. According to eyewitnesses, he grabbed a chair and threw it off the side of the building, laughing at what he'd just done. Thankfully, no one was injured when the thrown chair crashed to the sidewalk on Broadway — a busy, bar-filled street populated by tourists — six stories below. 

The chair actually ended up landing within a few feet of two police officers. Wallen may have laughed, but they sure didn't. With security footage confirming witness accounts, Wallen was arrested and charged with three felony counts of reckless endangerment, in addition to another count of disorderly conduct. He was released on $15,250 bail after spending a few hours in jail. Wallen's lawyer, Worrick Robinson, issued a statement confirming the arrest. "He is cooperating fully with authorities," Robinson's statement read (via WSMV4).

According to one legal expert, attorney David Raybin, Wallen could be sentenced to as much as six years in prison, but he likely won't. "It's probably a maximum of two years assuming he was not put on probation," Raybin told People. 

Could there have been more than just drunken shenanigans behind Morgan Wallen's ill-conceived decision to throw a chair off a rooftop bar in the middle of Nashville's busiest street? One theory that emerged had to do with the recent wedding of his ex-fiancée, KT Smith, who'd eloped with another man, Luke Scornavacco, the week before the chair-throwing incident. "KT's marriage to Luke last week just crushed him," a source alleged to the Daily Mail, claiming Wallen was devastated that his ex had moved on. "Whatever happened at that bar had to be reality hitting him in the face over losing the love of his life." It's an interesting theory — albeit one that Smith herself subsequently shot down.

Contacted by The Daily Beast for comment on the Daily Mail's report, Smith insisted there was no truth to that particular point of view. "Although it may seem like it correlates because of the timeline, I have no evidence to believe the incident had anything to do with the recent marriage announcement," she told the outlet.

She also sent her thoughts and prayers to the troubled country star. "I cannot speak on Morgan's behalf, but I do pray the very best for him," she added. "Praying that this was just a slip up and that he will return to the good path that he was on prior."