Under fire from critics a year ago for racial slurs, American country music star Morgan Wallen remains popular in his country, with a second album and a tour that are a hit. A success which poses again, according to its critics, the question of the acceptance of racism in this environment.
Pinned by a video released in early February 2021, where he used insulting vocabulary for African-Americans, the singer was for a time “suspended” by his label and banned from award ceremonies.
But her second album (“Dangerous: The double album”), released a month earlier in January 2021, still sold more than three million copies – more than Adele or Olivia Rodrigo. In response to public demand, a second date in his tour was added to the prestigious Madison Square Garden in New York, where the singer was performing on Wednesday and Thursday.
At a time when the “cancel culture”, a tendency to banish artists or personalities for their excesses or their racism, is often pointed out in the United States, critics of Morgan Wallen regret that he did not to be more accountable.
“The sales of his album skyrocketed because people, deep down, feel we’ve done too much,” said Sheryl Guinn, president of the notorious civil rights organization NAACP in Nashville, birthplace of country music, Tennessee.
“Hate runs deep,” tweeted singer Mickey Guyton, the first black woman nominated for a Grammy as a solo artist in the country category, who will sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl this weekend. .
For Sheryl Guinn, the problem goes beyond country music, a genre often criticized for its leniency in the face of racism. For her, the difficulty is “that America itself does not care enough to eradicate racism”.
Morgan Wallen, whose executives did not respond to AFP, apologized after the eruption of the video, but paid lip service according to his critics.
“I’m disappointed he didn’t do more, but I’m not surprised,” says country historian Charles Hughes, pointing to a “whole system” that “allows (Wallen) to be reinstated without anyone having to justify themselves”.
“You will never lose money in the United States if you bet on the resentment and the privilege of white people,” adds this professor at Rhodes College in Memphis (Tennessee), for whom one would have hoped that, “ even without financial incentive”, the “moral” or “political” imperatives are more considered in this matter.
For Nashville-based entertainment attorney and artist executive Zach Scott Gainous, controversy like the one surrounding Morgan Wallen can even draw attention to the artist in question and “boost” their “fanbase.”
According to Charles Hughes, country in general needs to “fundamentally rethink who gets hyped and why,” a structural change that requires more than creating “limited superficial spaces to praise each other afterwards.”
In recent years, black country and folk musicians — especially women — have carved out a space for themselves that the industry has long denied them, reclaiming in their own way a genre with African-American roots. .
Beyond the artists, Charles Hughes also calls for recruiting and hiring more black people in all trades in the country music industry. “I think it’s very important to divert our conversation from Wallen,” he adds. “There are so many other people doing great work. That’s what we need to focus on right now.”