A Guide to Morgan Wallen’s ‘Dangerous: The Double Album’ in His Own Words

Morgan Wallen knows that dropping 30 songs at once is asking for a pretty big listening commitment from his fans….

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Carena Liptak

| Posted on

January 8, 2021

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2:52 pm

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Morgan Wallen; Photo by John Shearer

Morgan Wallen knows that dropping 30 songs at once is asking for a pretty big listening commitment from his fans. He didn’t take putting a double album together lightly — in fact, he explained to Country Now and other outlets recently, it started as a half-joking conversation between the singer and his manager and expanded to a fully-fledged project only because 2020 gave him the time off the road to dedicate himself to a larger project.

The singer also promised that he worked hard to make sure Dangerous doesn’t contain any filler. He’s proud of each and every track on the album, and he hopes that fans will find something to love in every song, too. Still, even the most tightly-constructed double album can be intimidating to dive into.

With that in mind, read on for a cheat sheet to getting into Dangerous, with Wallen providing some insights into a handful of the songs on the project, in his own words.

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“Dangerous”

Key Lyric: “I could see me ordering too many drinks at the bar / Get the bartender pouring ‘em strong / That’s what I do when I’m trying to drink you gone….”

I wrote that song after I got into a little bit of trouble. We added a little love interest story into this song to hopefully make it more relatable to a larger amount of people, but it’s honestly a song I wrote to myself a couple weeks later. I felt like I learned some things, and I wanted to write it to myself, like a letter, almost…And what better way to describe the album, too: The lessons I’ve learned and the things I want myself to know. It felt really appropriate to entitle the whole project that.

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“7 Summers”

Key Lyric: “Yeah, you used to talk about / Gettin’ even further south / Somewhere where the summer lasted all year ‘round…”

I went to go write with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. I had never met Shane, never written with him before, so it was our first time hanging out. He came into the room, we talked a little bit, and he said, “Hey, I got this idea. It’s called ‘7 Summers.’ I don’t know what it means or where it’s supposed to go, but I think it sounds cool.”

I said, “Yeah, I think it sounds cool, and I think I do know where it’s supposed to go.” I had a girlfriend back in the day that always used to complain about the cold weather and how she wanted to go somewhere where it was always warm…I tried to keep it as real and personal as I could, and I don’t know, the song title just made me think back, for some reason.

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“Still Goin’ Down”

Key Lyric: “Still circle up big trucks around a fire / Still kickin’ up some dust behind the tires / Call it cliché, but hey, just take it from me / It’s still goin’ down out in the country…”

You know, the song is full of clichés, but we did it on purpose, and we tried to round it out by calling them clichés. Me and Hardy wrote this song, and I can’t remember who, but somebody within country music…had said something or did something that was kind of almost hating on [the genre] for some of the things that make country music country music, to me…We felt like we wanted to say, “Hey, these things are cool to us.” We like going to fires, we like driving trucks, we like hunting. For the same reason, I decided to put it as the first song on the second side [of the album], because the second side is a little more rowdy, redneck and proud of being that way, and I felt like that [song] was the perfect one to set the tone.

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“Livin’ the Dream”

Key Lyric: “I look like a rockstar / In and out of cop cars / Livin’ out a suitcase / Trashin’ hotel bars / If I see the sunrise / It’s ‘cause I stayed up all night / Drinkin’ ‘cause I need to / Damn it, what a good life…”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write a song or perform a song like that again. I think that’s one of those songs where I said what I said, and that’s kinda where it’s at. I’m really proud of the way we wrote it. In a way, it was almost like a prophetic song, a little bit, because I wasn’t really realizing the weight of what was being said in that song [when I wrote it.] I was starting to experience it at some level, because they were honest feelings…but I understand the song more so now that some things have happened.

It’s a song that I’m growing with. It’s cool. I don’t wake up feeling like that every single day, but there’s times…that I do feel like that. I just wanted to be honest and let people know that sometimes [fame’s] not all it’s cracked up to be.

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“Silverado for Sale”

Key Lyric: “Never thought I’d be calling you up today / Taking out an ad for this Chevrolet / But there’s a ring in the window just down the street / I wanna marry her, she wants to marry me…”

Most of the songs I write are based on my life or someone I know. That song in particular — obviously, I’m not married. I didn’t sell my truck to get a ring. I still got my truck!

But a lot of people that I know have been through that…A lot of my friends are married. I’ve seen people make sacrifices for something that they love or someone that they love, and I think that’s beautiful…I related to it based off of things that I’ve seen from my friends and family, coming from a place [where] money is not flowing always. I’ve seen people make sacrifices for people they love, and I think that’s awesome. I like to think I’d be able to do that if I found someone that made me feel that way. I think I’d sell my truck, too.

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Carena Liptak

Written by

Carena Liptak