New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Big Loud/Republic Records' multi-platinum superstar
Morgan Wallen is taking the world by storm with sophomore effort, Dangerous: The
Double Album, debuting at #1 this week atop the US Billboard 200 Albums chart and earning the largest streaming week for a country album in history.
Dangerous set a new bar across all streaming platforms. Breaking global debut records for most first-week streams and on-demand Alexa requests of any Country album on Amazon Music,
Wallen also had the #1 most added artist station across all genres on Pandora, among the top 10 highest streamed artists of the week. Last week,
Wallen demolished first day streaming records, becoming Spotify's biggest all-time first day stream record for a Country album and setting the record for the biggest first day and biggest first week for a Country album of all-time at Apple
Music in just two days.
Making history, 27 of the 30 songs on Dangerous have landed inside the Billboard Hot Country Songs Top 50, with six in the Top 10, setting an unprecedented new record. Early favorite "
Wasted On You" debuts at #1, making
Wallen the only artist with multiple #1 Hot Country Songs debuts in the chart's 62-year history. The song also earns him his second Hot 100 Top 10, debuting at #9 this week and touting 19 current entries throughout the chart.
Wallen is the first artist ever to debut at #1 on the Top Country Albums and Hot Country Songs charts simultaneously.
"This is absolutely insane,"
Wallen shares exclusively with Billboard. "Thank you to the fans for making this one of the best weeks of my life. When we decided to go for it with a double album, I knew we were taking a risk, but I believed in the music and hoped it would be something y'all loved. This goes way beyond any of my expectations. I have to thank my family and friends for always believing in me, my team for all of their hard work in putting this project together, and everyone who has supported me along the way. I'm blown away by the success of this record and all 30 of these songs. I will never forget this!"
With 265,000 in total consumption and over 240 MILLION streams, Dangerous is the #1 streaming album and had the #1 streaming week for a country album in its debut, also landing spots atop the Billboard Country Albums chart and the Billboard Top 200 Album Sales chart. Only
Taylor Swift and
Ariana Grande had larger streaming weeks for a non-hip-hop album, marking the biggest week for a Country album since 2018 and the biggest Country album without a ticket bundle since 2015. In the UK, the album debuted at the top of the Official Country Albums chart, Top Ten in the all-genre Official Album Downloads chart, and
Wallen is currently the only country artist in the all-genre Official Album chart. Additionally, "
7 Summers" is on the BBC
Radio 2 New
Music playlist for a second week.
"A sprawling coronation at the beginning of 2021" (Billboard), rave reviews for Dangerous came pouring in nationwide, alongside high-profile features in GQ, The New Yorker, and The Tennessean. This week,
Wallen covers Billboard magazine - "Is
Morgan Wallen Country's Next Global Star?"
CRITICAL PRAISE FOR DANGEROUS:
"In just a few short years,
Morgan Wallen has dominated the country music charts" - Associated Press
"the country set to beat in 2021" - Billboard
"the hottest act in country music at the moment" - Entertainment Tonight
"Wallen is that rare country artist with the range to pull off arena rock, easy-vibes Americana, and traditional country ballads." - GQ
"Dangerous unpacks the realities of being a young man seeking his place in the flyover. His yearning, kicking-back, seeking-love, getting-hurt and having-fun-along-the-way 808s-'n'-bluegrass-instrument pop-meets-country cocktail may be the best look yet at small-town coming of age for a nation seemingly further divided by the day." - HITS
"What makes the music breathe, especially as the collection stretches into its second hour, is Wallen's singing, which has a soulful flexibility..." - Los Angeles Times
"what makes Wallen's writing so magnetic is the easy, idiomatic shorthand that plunges you directly into his world." - Pitchfork
"Wallen has a penchant for making classic Nashville themes his own, adding dashes of winking self-awareness, aggrieved insecurity, and flirty playfulness to otherwise worn-out formulas." - Rolling Stone
"Morgan
Wallen is primed to become Country's biggest crossover star in years" - Stereogum
"Wallen's small town is an idyllic fantasy, an escape to a rural Neverland. It's a place of red-dirt roads and unlocked doors, a refuge from the pretensions and snobbery of cities, a home for simple pleasures like fishing, drinking and sex." - The New York Times
"The most wanted man in country" - The New Yorker
"Dangerous is a splendid blur of gentle dive-bar-neon antics, a fractured but somehow seamless timeline of meet-cutes and bittersweet partings, first kisses and mopey last calls." - The Ringer
"You can't stop
Morgan Wallen. You can only hope to contain him." - The Tennessean
"Dangerous proves its mettle:
Wallen stomps through the tracks with not just perfect vocal control but a sneering effortlessness" - Vulture
Morgan Wallen has staked his claim as Country music's next superstar with over 3.7 Billion on-demand streams, Multi-Platinum certifications, and four consecutive chart-toppers. The SNL guest's widely praised sophomore effort, Dangerous: The
Double Album (Big Loud/Republic Records), is out now. Featuring 30-tracks, the album debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and earned the biggest streaming week for a country album in history. It includes another record-breaking achievement in current single and one of TIME's Top 10 Songs of 2020, "
7 Summers" - which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and inside the Billboard Hot 100's Top 10 - as well as 3X Platinum Diplo collaboration, "Heartless," and recent Platinum chart-topper "More Than My Hometown." As "the most wanted man in country" (The New Yorker), the Tennessee native has stacked up the accolades, winning 2020's CMA New Artist of the Year and iHeartRadio's Best New Country Artist awards, reigning #1 atop Billboard's 2020 year-end Country Airplay chart with "Chasin' You," plus high-profile features in The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, The Washington Post, Genius, GQ and more.
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