It’s officially up.
Despite not releasing an album in 2024, country superstar Morgan Wallen still had quite the year. While it’s mostly been filled with accolades and broken records – such as finally being crowned Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards, or obtaining a record-setting five #1 singles on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, it’s also been met with plenty of controversy.
At this point, we are all aware of the chair-throwing incident that took place at Eric Church’s bar, Chief’s, back in April. And unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are also aware of the plea deal Wallen accepted earlier in the month that turned the felony charges into misdealers, allowing the 31 year-old to stay out of jail by serving seven days in a DUI education center and a two-year supervised probation period.
Well, the following month, the arrest ended up playing a key role in the denial of a 20-foot sign bearing Wallen’s name over the front entrance of his Nashville Bar. In case you forgot about that controversy, the Nashville Metro Council infamously voted 30-3 to reject the construction of the aforementioned sign, although it did not violate any zoning regulations.
Metro Councilmember Jordan Huffman had some extremely strong words for Wallen and his past controversies.
“He gives all of us a bad name. His comments are hateful, his actions are harmful and he don’t belong in this town as far as I’m concerned. I’m tired of this city bending over to just make anybody happy that makes a comment that they want to. We continue to go down this road.”
At-large Councilmember, Delishia Porterfield, also cited his past controversies as a reason to deny Wallen’s name being on This Bar’s sign, seemingly letting her disdain for the “Whiskey Glasses” singer get in the way of doing her job:
“I don’t want to see a billboard up with a name of a person who’s throwing chairs off of balconies and who is saying racial slurs.”
Last week, however, Wallen received a second chance to erect the sign outside of This Bar and succeeded with the Nashville council voting 30-1 in favor of approving its construction and installation with an additional six members abstaining and three being absent from the hearing. As noted by The Tennessean, the only council member to vote against the construction of the sign was none other than the aforementioned Delishia Porterfield.
And as of today, music outlet, Music Mayhem, uploaded a video to their TikTok account showing footage of the sign officially going up…just in time for New Years.
While some comments on the video pointed out the ridiculousness of the ‘over-the-door’ sign being denied in the first place (as his name was still displayed at the top of the building), most were just happy to finally see it going up.
Watch here:
Wallen also shared a teaser of a new song to his social media account a few days ago. If you happened to miss it, we gotchya covered. You can listen here.