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.

Looking back, Morgan Wallen has come to see his elimination from "The Voice" to be a blessing in disguise. "And honestly, I'm thankful that I didn't win because it gave me a chance to take a couple years after that show and really figure out who I was as an artist and get the right team around me," he explained in an interview with People. That strategy paid off in July 2016 when he was signed to the Big Loud record label. At that time, his first single, "The Way I Talk," was released. It went on to become the first of many country hits for the emerging country star.

However, a lesser-known incident from earlier that same year was Wallen's arrest. In January, he was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and hit with a misdemeanor charge, Taste of Country reported. Charges were subsequently dropped by prosecutors. Information about Wallen's arrest and the circumstances behind it quietly disappeared. The arrest record no longer appears on any official government sites. Why? According to an official at Davidson County Court Clerk's office, the case was likely dismissed and expunged from his record. As for Wallen, he's never discussed the circumstances behind what was, reportedly, his first arrest. 

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.

Facing criminal charges after being arrested for public intoxication wasn't the only scandal that Morgan Wallen stirred up in 2020. That October, he was slated to perform for a national television audience as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," an appearance that promised to propel his career even further. 

Shortly before the big day, videos emerged on social media in which he was seen in the midst of a crowded house party. Neither he nor his fellow revelers were wearing face masks, and Wallen was even photographed kissing various young women. That was problematic, given that "SNL" had only just recently returned to producing in-studio shows in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, with stringent protocols in place for the show's cast and guests, which Wallen had now openly flouted. As a result, "SNL" producer Lorne Michaels axed him from the show, bringing in Jack White as a last-minute replacement. 

Nevertheless, Wallen was invited back to the show in December, where he made his debut as a musical guest and appeared in a sketch mocking his pandemic partying. Jason Bateman portrayed a future version of the singer who'd traveled back in time to caution him not to party. "Well, trust me, somebody's gonna post a video of you ignoring COVID protocol and the whole internet's gonna freak out," Bateman's future Wallen warned.

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."

If the general public was appalled by Morgan Wallen's racial epithet scandal, so too were executives in country music radio. They responded by immediately yanking all of Wallen's music off of their airwaves. The most crucial of these was iHeartMedia, America's largest radio station group, but Cumulus Media, Beasley Media Group, and Cox Media Group also removed Wallen's music. "Effective immediately, his music and content will be removed from our country brand station playlists," the latter company said in a statement to Billboard. 

Additionally, Country Music Television (CMT) announced plans to remove all of Wallen's music videos from rotation indefinitely. "After learning of Morgan Wallen's racial slur late last night, we are in the process of removing his appearances from all our platforms," CMT tweeted.

That outrage even trickled down to the organizations that handed out awards. In a statement via X, the Academy of Country Music announced that Wallen was no longer eligible for the 2021 edition of the ACM Awards. "The Academy does not condone or support intolerance or behavior that doesn't align with our commitment and dedication to diversity and inclusion," the statement declared.

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. 

As that lawyer predicted, Morgan Wallen's racism controversy quickly faded. By 2023, in fact, it was well in the past, with his music more popular than ever. How popular? According to Hits Daily Double, 18 of the 50 most-streamed country singles in 2023 were his — that's a whopping 36%. Meanwhile, that same year, he landed six singles in the top 10. 

There's no denying that Wallen was at the top of his game. Then, that May, he took to Instagram to share some bad news about his health with his followers. As he revealed, doctors had determined that he'd severely injured his vocal cords. "Their advice is that I go on vocal rest for six weeks, so that's what I'm going to do," he continued, adding that doctors didn't even want him talking during those weeks. Not following that advice, he was warned, could result in permanent damage to his vocal cords. 

The good news, however, was that a full recovery was possible, so long as he did as he was told. The bad news was that he was in the middle of a tour, which translated to a whole lot of disappointed ticket-holders for the shows he was forced to cancel. "For the longevity of my career, this is the choice I had to make," he explained.

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 2023, when Morgan Wallen and KT Smith were continuing to co-parent their son, an unexpected accident occurred. That June, Smith was caring for the two-year-old boy when he was bitten on the face by her dog, Legend. Smith had rescued the dog from the side of a road a year earlier. Indigo was rushed to the ER, where he received stitches. Smith updated fans that Indie, as his parents call him, was doing okay and would be returning from the hospital after a couple of days.

The incident forced her to find a new home for her dog. "I don't care about the hate that I get from this," she said in her post, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, of her decision to relocate Legend. "I care more about my kid and giving him a home that he deserves."

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. 

In the wake of Morgan Wallen's arrest and felony charges, a source came forward to pose a theory about the real culprit underlying this and other controversies that have dogged the country star over the years: alcohol. "Morgan is generally a nice, fun person to hang out with, but when he gets going he doesn't know when to stop," that source told People. "Morgan and alcohol is a problem and it's been a problem that keeps coming back around."

That checks out. In his 2016 DUI arrest, his 2020 arrest, his 2021 racism scandal, and this latest arrest for throwing a chair, alcohol is the through line. In fact, in 2021, Wallen appeared on "Good Morning America," where he addressed his use of a racial slur. During that conversation, he also revealed that he'd subsequently entered rehab. "For 30 days, I spent some time out in San Diego, California, you know, just trying to figure it out. ... Why am I acting this way? Do I have an alcohol problem?" he told "GMA" anchor Michael Strahan during the interview. "Do I have a deeper issue?"

‌Judging by the lyrics of his 2023 single, "Born with a Beer in My Hand," rehab may not have taken. "I ain't sayin' I swore it off for good," he sings in one verse, "I'm just sayin' I'm doin' the best I can."

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."