Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Album sales surge for Morgan Wallen
Fans are buying up the country star’s latest album after a video showed him shouting a racial slur last week.
NASHVILLLE, TENN. » Fans of Morgan Wallen are buying up the country star’s latest album after a video showed him shouting a racial slur last week.
Wallen’s sophomore record, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” retains its top spot for a fourth week on Billboard’s all-genre albums chart, less than a week after Wallen apologized for using racist language.
The country music industry acted swiftly to publicly rebuke him and radio stations and streaming services removed his songs from their playlists. But fans responded by playing him even more.
Billboard reports that his latest album sold 25,000 copies during the week ending Feb. 4, an increase of 102%, according to MRC Data. Billboard reported that the album’s streaming numbers slightly increased by 3%, representing roughly 160 million on-demand streams. Song downloads from the album also went up by 67%.
The bump in interest extended beyond just Wallen’s current album. Daily sales of his first album “If I Know Me,” released in 2018, also increased from 200 to 2,500 on the week ending Feb. 4, according to data provided by MRC Data.
Hannah Karp, Billboard’s editorial director, said that some uptick in interest in his music is coming from people who are curious about Wallen in the wake of the scandal and media attention. But she said that also shows how his fans are responding to decisions to remove him from the radio as well.