Morgan Wallen recently recording ‘The Dangerous Sessions’
Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album remains the top-charting album of 2021, the unexpected result of a mass-industry cancellation in February. But the controversy surrounding Morgan Wallen has also drawn attention to older releases.
Back in early February, it looked like Morgan Wallen’s career was done. After being recorded uttering a racial slur outside of his home, Wallen found himself canceled by nearly every radio station, streaming music platform, and awards show in America. But instead of crushing Wallen’s career, the mass-cancellation sparked an explosion in sales and support. The singer’s just-released Dangerous: The Double Album enjoyed a record-setting 10-straight weeks atop multiple album charts, and still remains in the top 5.
Now, it looks like that reaction has also been spilling into older releases. Wallen has already scored eight separate Platinum sales awards, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), but most of those are for recent releases. That is, until now: according to stats recently shared with Digital Music News, Wallen has just received a Gold certification for “Spin You Around,” a song released nearly six years ago.
The RIAA’s Gold certification signifies the sale of 500,000 ‘units’ of a song or album, or the equivalent ‘sales’ across paid downloads and streams. Platinum ups the number to one million.
In other words: if an artist receives either award, it signifies that a very substantial number of fans are buying, downloading, or streaming the song or album in question (usually, it’s a combination of all three). Now, the emergence of an older ‘catalog’ track on the awards shelf means that other older songs are also likely to emerge as award winners soon.
Alongside the latest accolade for the older track, Wallen’s Dangerous is still setting records.
The album has quietly reassumed the top slot on Billboard’s country albums chart, and remains number 3 on Billboard’s overall album ranking. That’s doubly remarkable considering that Morgan Wallen has been almost entirely silent since early February. Just recently, Wallen broke that silence briefly, but only to cancel his entire summer touring itinerary.
It’s unclear when Wallen will decide to tour again, though it’s entirely possible that the artist will headline an arena tour in 2022. For now, Morgan Wallen remains largely canceled, though a sprinkling of radio stations and even Spotify have started easing their bans.
Most recently, Wallen was banned by the Billboard Music Awards, despite scoring the biggest Billboard chart successes of 2021. That followed an earlier block by the Academy of Country Music Awards, which found itself awkwardly blacklisting the most successful country artist of the year from its recent awards showcase. The ACM Awards ultimately scored its lowest ratings in history, though it’s unclear if the Wallen ban was the reason.