Morgan Wallen has been reinstated to a prominent Spotify playlist as well as a Knoxville area radio station.
The “More Than My Hometown” singer was removed from most country radio and prominent playlists across all streaming platforms. Now, the hitmaker’s song “Somebody’s Problem” has been added back onto a Spotify owned playlist called ‘Country Coffeehouse.’ A playlist that boasts of over 600,000 followers. Wallen previously appeared on this playlist before he was filmed using a racial slur in early February, when he was removed from the playlist.
Additionally, Knoxville-based WMYL, otherwise known as 96.7 Merle FM, has become the first radio station in America to reinstate Morgan Wallen following a poll from their listeners. This comes after Wallen was removed from country radio, following his use of the n-word. The poll was brought on after an overwhelming amount of his fans demanded that they wanted to hear his music on their radio again.
“We were disappointed by the [Wallen’s] behavior in the video,” WMYL station owner Ron Meredith shared in a statement. “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. While nobody liked the behavior, we are a radio station – not in the censorship business.”
Meredith later added, “we are going to now literally let East Tennessee country [music] listeners vote. If they say no, Morgan’s music stays off 96.7 Merle. If they vote yes, we will play the songs local country listeners want to hear most. That’s the business we are in.”
And after over 35,000 votes poured in, WMYL revealed that 92% of the voters said yes, they want to hear Wallen on the radio. Shortly, after the poll’s results were calculated and the votes were in favor of Wallen, the station quickly added his music back into rotation.
The East Tennessee native recently became the best selling artist of 2021 and broke a record previously held by Garth Brooks.
