Country star Morgan Wallen has capped a tumultuous year on top of the charts and on top of his game, leading the all genre Billboard 200 albums chart and nearly selling out an entire tour.
His Dangerous: The Double Album finished 2021 as the year’s best-selling album, beating out projects by pop superstars Olivia Rodrigo, Pop Smoke, Taylor Swift and Drake. And after announcing The Dangerous Tour less than a month ago, Wallen’s comeback run has nearly sold out — with 48 of 54 shows completely out of tickets.
Wallen revealed the details of The Dangerous Tour in mid-November, with the 47-city trek kicking off February 3 in Evansville, Indiana, and running through September 25 in Los Angeles, California. Tickets began selling at a record pace for astronomic amounts nearly instantly, and as a result the Tennessee native added more shows in New York City; Nashville; Orange Beach, Alabama; Atlanta; and Los Angeles — with most of those selling out as well.
At press time, over 705,000 tickets had been sold for The Dangerous Tour all full two months before it begins, and the only remaining tickets are for five shows — Orange Beach, Alabama; Atlanta; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Mountain View, California; and Los Angeles.
All of this is over the backdrop of the way Wallen’s year began, which featured the record-setting roll out of Dangerous: The Double Album and then a swift fall from grace — followed by a big rebound. After Wallen was caught on candid video using a racial slur with friends, the star was booted off country radio playlists, removed from awards show consideration and suspended by his record label, but the fallout only galvinized his fan base.
Despite pleas by the Tennessee native to take no action on his behalf, sales and streams of his music actually increased as Wallen became a kind of martyr against “cancel culture,” and after a series of steps back into public life, his return seems to show that those hoping to make an example of the nation’s best-selling country artist have failed.