It’s only fitting that country music singer Morgan Wallen’s most soul-searching album yet features a court sketch of him as the cover — inspired by his highly publicized legal issues after throwing a chair off a Nashville, Tennessee, bar rooftop while drunk last year.
Released May 16, “I’m the Problem” is 37 songs of self-deprecation, bitterness and occasionally, fatalism. It only sometimes works.
The album’s fatal flaw is its length. The tracklist drags on for almost two hours, burying the songs worth listening to under repetitive trap beats and a lack of lyrical ingenuity. About half of the album is pure filler — easy to listen to but not good — sonically or lyrically.
In “I’m the Problem,” Wallen shines when he forgoes smirking about his drinking habits and his Chevy Silverado and instead digs into the worst of himself. The best parts of the album are bitter and gritty.
Songs like “Drinking Til It Does” face alcoholism head-on, a topic his previous albums glossed over with throwaway lines about his love of whiskey.
“Superman,” which he wrote for his son, admits his shortcomings as a role model when it comes to alcohol. But it stops short of actually taking accountability, weakening the song.
The explicitly dark “Jack and Jill” details the crash-and-burn of a small town relationship riddled with alcohol abuse, drug addiction and extramarital affairs. “They found their peace somewhere underneath the roots of a sycamore tree,” Wallen sings.
Wallen mentions Christianity sporadically throughout the album, but his most interesting piece of religious imagery is in “I Ain’t Comin’ Back,” which features Post Malone. “Now I’m walkin’ on this water mixed with Johnnie Walker Black,” he sings, referencing Bible passages in which Jesus miraculously walks on water, “There’s a lot of reasons I ain’t Jesus, but the main one is that I ain’t coming back.”
Several of the songs on this album explore Wallen’s woes with women. “I’m the Problem,” the titular song, and “Just in Case” are the most powerful.
“You hate that when you look at me / you halfway see yourself,” he points out in the former, describing a relationship where he isn’t the only one who’s flawed.
In the latter, he breaks the stereotypical Wallen formula of mindlessly sleeping around after being dumped. He instead sings about purposefully pulling back from other women in case his ex returns to him.
Other songs about his inability to keep a relationship veer toward straight-out misogyny. “Genesis” portrays women as Eve, put on Earth to tempt Wallen into sin.
In “Kiss Her In Front of You,” Wallen acts as if he’s a high school boy who just got dumped for the first time and is now Snapchatting ten different girls to get revenge.
His only female collaboration on the entire album, “What I Want” featuring Tate McRae falls short of being listenable, with trap beats drowning out McRae’s voice.
Wallen promised his listeners he was moving on from trap beats on Theo Von’s podcast, but if the aforementioned song, among others, are any indication, he seems to have forgotten his words.
Previous albums of Wallen’s use trap beats well, but in “I’m the Problem,” Wallen falls back on their catchiness to avoid experimenting lyrically or sonically. Quite a few tracks on this tracklist sound like they could be on any of his albums. He doesn’t take risks, making the album sound tedious and repetitive.
The closing song, “I’m a Little Crazy,” ties up what works well. Wallen exposes the worst parts of himself, singing about dealing speed, keeping “A loaded .44 by the bed” and “Screamin’ at a TV that ain’t got ears / On anti-depressants and lukewarm beers.” The album ends with the image of himself as a paranoid and bitter drunkard who spends his days essentially doom scrolling on his couch.
Wallen is trying, it seems, to dig deeper for material to make music and rehabilitate his public image by becoming vulnerable about his vices. “I’m the Problem” had potential to prove to his critics that he’s more than a party boy who can only create songs that sound the same, but he doesn’t stray far enough from his comfort zone to do so.
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