“The internet does not stop at the Atlantic Ocean,” says Republic CEO Monte Lipman. Can an artist whose new album features song titles like “Country A$$ Shit” and “Rednecks, Red Letters, Red Dirt” take on the world without diluting his sound? And though Wallen has largely recovered from that - with an earnest apology and, ultimately, a return to SNL - he and his team face a conundrum: how to translate the very American specificity that makes him distinct to the widest audience possible. The same good-natured unruliness that informs Wallen’s down-to-earth appeal has, of late, sometimes backfired: In October, he was disinvited from his debut Saturday Night Live performance when footage of his mask-free, decidedly un-pandemic-appropriate behavior at a football game (and bar after it) exploded on social media. Big Loud Records has partnered with pop powerhouse Republic Records in a bid to make him a truly global country star. Now, Wallen is poised to reach an even wider audience. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, with “Whiskey Glasses” topping the 2019 Top Country Airplay year-end tally and “Chasin’ You” claiming the same spot in 2020 - making Wallen the first artist in 13 years to achieve that double shot. Four of his first six singles reached No. With over 3.2 billion career on-demand audio streams in the United States alone, he’s a major force behind his genre’s recent streaming boom while overall streaming rose 3.1% in 2020 compared with pre-pandemic numbers, country soared 14.6%, according to MRC Data. But Wallen’s (often alcohol-soaked) songs about love, friendship and heartache - delivered in his pleasingly gruff, instantly recognizable baritone - have catapulted him to a kind of success far from typical for a country act.
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