Wallen is No. 1 for seventh straight week

Morgan Wallen has broken another record as his Dangerous: The Double Album has topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for the seventh straight week, dated March 6th. Dangerous has become the only country album to spend its first seven weeks on the chart in its 64 year history, according to Billboard. Wallen breaks Garth Brooks’ record with The Chase spending its first six weeks at the top of the chart in 1992 before slipping for two weeks and back to No. 1 in its ninth.

Dangerous earned an equivalent of 89,000 album sales in the U.S. in the week ending February 25th, which is down 5% from the previous week. Wallen continues to reign as the best selling artist of 2021, despite being blacklisted by the industry four weeks ago after video surfaced of him using a racial slur.

The album debuted atop the Billboard list six weeks ago and set the bar for country records by shattering first-week streams and on-demand Alexa requests. Upon its release, 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.

More than half of the chart-topping weeks have been without the help any promotion after major radio chains, video channels, and online outlets pulled his music from its rotations and his label “made the decision to suspend Morgan Wallen’s recording contract indefinitely” after the video surfaced on TMZ. Many of the stations, including several we spoke with, do not have a timeline on restoring his music to its playlists, despite sharing a five minute video apology a week after the incident surfaced. However, last week one radio station in his hometown of Knoxville reinstated his music after polling its listeners.

“We were disappointed by the behavior in the video. But we were also uncomfortable with sitting in judgment. If you’ve lived long enough, you probably have said at one point or another you were glad that video and social media wasn’t everywhere when you were young and did stupid things,” 96.7-FM Merle WMYL website station owner says Ron Meredith.

“While nobody liked the behavior, we are a radio station – not in the censorship business. We changed the music on our station last year so it focuses now only on what East Tennessee country fans like. So, this situation is like being between a rock and a hard place.

“We felt uncomfortable with all the different institutions making decisions for country listeners. We didn’t want to do that at 96.7 Merle.”

More than 35k votes were cast with 92% of the listeners agreeing his music should be played on the station. The station is claiming to be the only one currently playing the country star.

Wallen’s music surged by more than 300% in the wake of the controversy as fans campaigned to put an end to him being the latest high-profile case of cancel culture. Diehards have defended flocked to iTunes and other streaming outlets to backlash radio for its stance with many even defending his use of the slur. The album continues to dominate even after Wallen himself asks that fans not support him during this time.

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