The Hootie & the Blowfish singer went to bat for Wallen, whose music was temporarily dropped from radio stations following the scandal.
Darius Rucker said Morgan Wallen has taken steps to improve himself more than three years after the country star was caught on video repeatedly using a racial slur.
The Hootie & the Blowfish singer, in an appearance on the “Rolling Stone Music Now” podcast, declared that you don’t have to like artists to like their music before being asked if Wallen should be “forgiven.”
“I think Morgan’s become a better person since that,” Rucker told host Brian Hiatt. “I’ve known Morgan a long time. Since all that happened, Morgan’s tried to really better himself and become a better person and see the world in a much better, better way.”
Wallen, who was caught using the racial epithet in 2021, saw his music temporarily taken off of a number of radio stations, and the Academy of Country Music Awards declared him ineligible for trophies at the 2021 edition of the ceremony.
The country star apologized in the wake of the scandal, and his sales numbers surged almost immediately following the incident. Three dozen tracks from his most recent album appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Rucker told Hiatt that Wallen — who was arrested for tossing a chair off a Nashville bar’s roof earlier this year — hasn’t been forgiven over the controversy and claimed he’s “still not out” for Country Music Awards along with ACM Awards (he won Album of the Year at the latter ceremony in 2022).
“They can say what they want, but the fact that Morgan Wallen is not up for entertainer of the year and those things is crazy,” said Rucker, who claimed that no one in the country world is selling more tickets than him.
He later continued, “But that’s society, and what I think doesn’t matter. And people are gonna make their own opinion and go with it, so it is what it is.”
