Call me a sucker for nostalgia, but I’ll forever be a fan of Morgan Wallen’s debut album…even if the Sneedville native himself disagrees.
The dominating country music phenomenon, still sitting at No.1 on Billboard’s Artist 100, recently rewound the clock, taking a look back at his first studio project from April 2018, If I Know Me. During an interview aired on SiriusXM’s Morgan Wallen Radio, the hitmaker revealed that there were a handful of songs from the album that he’s less than fond of.
Kudos to our good friends over at Holler for catching the segment during which he admits that there were some learning curves to the Big Loud release, stating, “I was super young; I was 23 when it came out. That was one of those ones, you know, where I didn’t have a complete grasp on who I wanted to be, what I wanted to sound like, what I wanted to say.” While he may not have been fully confident in who he was as an artist at the time, there’s no denying that some of the album’s biggest hits helped catapult his career and turn him into a household name.
Reflecting on the now 4x Platinum Certified collection of 14 songs, he says that there was a mix between tracks he still takes pride in to this day while others he would now give the chopping block: “That one kind of feels like it’s a little bit all over the place. There are songs on that album that I love, and there are songs on that album that I would never record again…I’m sure those aren’t hard to figure out if you go listen to it.”
For those trying to connect the dots of his personal ranking, we can at least verify that the radio hits like “The Way I Talk,” “Chasin’ You,” and the fan favorite, “Talkin’ Tennessee,” are still personal favorites. He notes, “I still play those songs in my sets; I still think that those are extremely well done, and I’m proud of that work as a whole.”
If I had to take a wild guess, maybe some of the more back-road, kitschy tracks like “Redneck Love Song,” “Happy Hour,” and “Whatcha Know ’Bout That” fall a little flat in Wallen’s eyes. But they’ll always have a special place in my heart (I’m also a sucker for cheesy). According to Spotify and the fans, the latter track, along with “If I Ever Get You Back” and “Gone Girl,” rank as the least-streamed songs, though calling them unpopular feels like a stretch considering each still has well over 40 million streams.
I think as an artist it’s easy to look back on early work and cringe a little bit, especially when you’re just finding your groove in songwriting sessions and alongside new producers. While Wallen doesn’t necessarily call out any of these tracks by name, there’s no denying that the R&B-influenced “If I Know Me” and sultry ballad “Not Good At Not” contain hints of the sound that would eventually become much more prominent on his later albums.
He just needed to strengthen his relationships with fellow songwriter ERNEST and acclaimed producer Charlie Handsome in Nashville, two connections that would ultimately become key to shaping his later discography: “That’s where I first met Charlie and ERN and, you know, we all kind of just started getting to know each other really well then too. I found that album to be a real learning experience.”
Both collaborators are bound to be key influences on his inevitable upcoming project with his summer single, “Been By Now,” giving the first glimpse into what’s to come. Now it’s just a matter of waiting to see when the “I’m The Problem” singer will inevitably break the internet with said new music.