Landoman Album Reviews #1: Morgan Wallen - I'm The Problem

I've been reviewing music for a while now, but it's always been top ten lists or countdowns, and I think it's time to switch things up. My newest series is something I think will be very fun for readers, and a little bit more digestible. I'd like to present Landoman Album Reviews, which is pretty self-explanatory. I'll take a recently released, popular album, and review it to see what I think. I'll give my opinions track-by-track, and then decide at the end how it holds up as an overall album. I'll also list my favorite songs and least favorite songs, and give it a score out of 100. That seems like a good formula. So, what are we going to start with? Well...

Morgan Wallen is the biggest country artist in the world at the moment. This album, I'm The Problem, was highly anticipated and has held the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 for 6 weeks at the time of writing. I'm expecting it to be in the top ten for a long time, considering that his previous 2 albums are also still in the top ten. How has he gotten this level of success? Well, for one, he's made these albums streaming juggernauts by including a ridiculous number of tracks. I'm The Problem features a whopping 37 tracks, all of which charted on the Hot 100 the week the album dropped, which became a record. This success is one of the reasons I thought this would be a good album to start with.

The other reason I chose this specific album is because Morgan Wallen is one of the artists I've listened to the most over the past few years. He's my most-listened to artist of all time on my Spotify account, and I've given him a lot of praise for his work on One Thing At A Time and Dangerous: The Double Album. I even called "I Wrote The Book" the best song of 2023. The newest release from one of my favorite artists? This is something I was very excited for, and I was hoping it'd be just as good as the last. That begs the question - is it as good as One Thing At A Time? We're about to find out. We'll start with the songs, one-by-one.

TRACK REVIEWS

The album begins with the title track, which I think is a fine song. It's not great, but it's got a nice melody and the misdirection of the song's name into what it's about is pretty interesting. The song is about how this girl thinks Wallen is the problem in their relationship, but Wallen questions it, saying that "if I'm the problem, well then why'd you stick around this long" and other statements of the sort. I feel like that may be a bit toxic, but he portrays himself as a flawed person, so I think it works okay.

"I Got Better" is the second track, and I think this one's a bit better. This song is about how Wallen's life and personality have improved since his last breakup, and telling this girl that "[he] got better since [she] got gone". I do think there is a lot of potential for relatability with this, as I know a few people who's lives have improved after a breakup making them see more clearly, so it's a nice premise for a song. I do think this would've worked better at the end of the album, highlighting a redemption arc of some sort, but I also think it works directly after "I'm The Problem" in a way to show a contrast.

"Superman" is one of the strongest tracks on the album. This one's about his son, and how he wants him to know that he's trying his best despite his personal issues. I really think this is a powerful message from a broken father to his son. I do think this is coming from a place of genuine love for his son, and Wallen gets really personal in it. The theme of the album so far is that Wallen has a lot of issues, but that he's trying his best to be better. 

The fourth song is the 1st collaboration on the album, that being "What I Want" with rising pop star Tate McRae. I was very interested to see what this sounded like, considering that both of these artists make very different music. I don't think it's bad necessarily, but I don't think McRae and Wallen mesh nearly as well as I was hoping. It's a catchy country pop song, but it doesn't do anything to really elevate itself over the rest of the album.

"Just In Case" follows that, and this is the first song on the album that I really disliked. This is mostly because I think this displays Wallen as someone who uses women and doesn't really want to get close. He says he gets into relationships but doesn't let himself fall in love "just in case" he can get back together with his ex. He's about to go all the way, but he stops himself before it can go any further. I don't think it sounds bad from a musical standpoint, but I'm not a fan of what it's displaying.

The biggest question I have with track 6, "Interlude", is this. Why is it so early on the album? An interlude should be about halfway into the album, but this is in the first 6th of the album, which I find weird. I guess this might be a preview of a future song, because it sounds half-finished and clunky, but I do think there's potential with it. It is only 44 seconds, so it's not too much, but I don't get why it needs to be here at all.

Track 7, "Falling Apart", is just boring. There's no percussion, and it's got this twangy country instrumental that I don't think works as well as it should. This is about how he's falling apart without this girl, and it's one of the more generic songs on the album. This probably should've been cut, if I'm being honest, because it doesn't really add anything. Not particularly a fan.

The eighth track, "Skoal, Chevy, and Browning" continues a run of mediocre/bad songs that I was worried was not going to end. The chorus features his Uncle Joe telling him to be like the brands in the title line, "there in a pinch", "steady as a rock", and "try to shoot 'em straight". He also mentions something happening to his cousin, and that his uncle wishes he gave him the same advice. While there is some emotional depth with the familial connection, it doesn't really do much to captivate me. 

Track #9, "Eyes Are Closed", is the first good song we've had in a while. I really like how this one sounds, with some of the better trap production he's had. This has a similar premise to "Thinkin' Bout Me", a song I honestly thought was overhated. He asks this girl, "who do you see when your eyes are closed?", implying that he thinks it's him. It's a nice little song that does this premise a slight bit more maturely than "Thinkin' Bout Me". I also like the tidbit he gave that this was the first song his son said he liked, which was cute.

"Kick Myself" is one of the best songs on the album. It's got a very catchy melody, and the premise about how he's getting rid of all these things to improve his life, but can't get rid of his destructive personality. I think it works very well due to how strong the production is (it reminds me of "Me to Me" a lot, which is a great song). It's not necessarily the most emotionally compelling, but I do think it's a very fun song to listen to.

"20 Cigarettes" is another song that shows up way too early in the album (really, Wallen? You couldn't put it at track 20?). This song is about a night out with this girl that Wallen has, and the title is how many cigarettes he has left in his box of smokes throughout the night. Ignoring the fact that smoking is one of the most intensely unattractive things a person can do, I think it's somewhat clever. It's a way to show the passage of time in a different manner. Not bad.

“TN” retreads the heartbreak-in-Tennessee theme Wallen has already done, and it's done better here. It doesn’t add anything to what “Tennessee Numbers” already covered, and while the production is passable, it feels like filler meant to pad the tracklist. There’s no fresh emotional twist, no standout melody, and no compelling reason it needed to exist beyond geographic branding. Not awful, just pointless.

“Missing” is the definition of filler. It's not terrible, but completely redundant. Wallen’s done this type of song a dozen times before: longing for a girl, questioning himself, and repeating the same emotional metaphors we’ve heard across his catalog. Even the title feels recycled — he literally had a song with “Missing” in it on the last album. This one sounds better, sure, but it doesn’t say anything new. Catchy production aside, it's hard to find a reason this needed to exist in a 37-track lineup.

"Where'd That Girl Go" is interesting. The premise of this song is that this girl suddenly became affectionate and warm towards Wallen despite her showing none of that previously. My question is - why does he miss the one that hated him? Is this an admission that he's attracted to toxic behavior rather than affectionate behavior? I find that kind of strange, but you do you, Wallen. This sounds pretty fine, but overall it's not one of the standouts in either direction.

"Genesis" has one of the more unique stories on the album,. Morgan compares his first drink of whiskey to the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis, with the snake tempting him with the alcohol instead of an apple. That's honestly pretty clever in a way, as it connects how humans were tempted in the beginning of the Bible with how he struggles with his own temptations. I honestly like it a lot, and it has a catchy melody to add to that. Good song.

This is followed up by "Revelation", which is a slower song about how Wallen wishes he could still sing songs about Jesus like he used to when he was young. He says he needs to listen to preachers like Billy Graham instead of drinking Jim Beam, but part of me wonders if he really means this, since numerous songs after this are bout his drinking and living the fun life. But, I guess that's the thing about this album. He's the problem. He knows he's not living the right way, but the temptation is too strong for him. There's a lot of compelling emotions in the first part of the album, and I think it starts to come to a head after this. 

Track 17 features his 2nd Eric Church collaboration, "Number 3 and Number 7". This song is pretty sad, honestly. It's about a guy who imagines himself as Dale Earnhardt (#3) while drinking Jack Daniels (#7) and driving. He crashes into a tree and, presumably, gets hurt. He then realizes how frail life is and that he shouldn't be doing that. It's got an okay melody and Church's contribution is nice, so it's overall pretty good. Not better than "Man Made A Bar", but good.

Then, we get to this.... I'll be blunt here. "Kiss Her In Front Of You" is the worst song Morgan Wallen has ever recorded. It's got all the toxic ex behavior of "Thinkin' Bout Me" but with a somehow more childish demeanor. It's also got very clunky trap percussion that sounds abysmal. This was a rough one to sit through. Him going to the same bar as his ex to kiss his new girl (who he doesn't seem to really see as more than a pair of "blue eyes") is just toxic behavior, plain and simple. 

“If You Were Mine” feels oddly presumptuous in tone and sloppy in execution. It’s Wallen listing everything he would do for a girl he isn’t actually with. This can work in theory, but here it comes off more possessive than romantic. Add in the muddy mixing and a flat instrumental, and it just feels half-baked. There’s nothing memorable about it melodically or lyrically. If you’re looking for a better version of this idea, honestly, Ocean Park Standoff already nailed it with the same title. Skip this one.

“Don’t We” is another ode to small-town life, but it’s about as by-the-numbers as it gets. Wallen leans into familiar country tropes (dirt roads, tight-knit pride, rural charm, etc.) without saying anything new or memorable. The country-rock guitar has some energy, but the lyrics are unoriginal, and the chorus leans too hard on nostalgia without emotional weight. It’s listenable, sure, but it feels like it was made by asking an A.I. to generate a country song's lyrics.

It's not a Morgan Wallen album if it doesn't include him working with HARDY, who appears on the track "Come Back As A Redneck". This song is about a city folk that both guys hope reincarnates as a redneck when he dies. I like how the choruses sound, but I think the lyrics could've been a little bit more powerful if they painted out the guy as a terrible person rather than just some city dude they don't know. This is not one of my favorite songs on the album.

For some reason, track 22 is a Dua Lipa ripoff. Morgan Wallen ripped off Dua Lipa. What kind of sick, twisted world are we living in? Despite that, "Love Somebody" isn't abysmal or anything, but it just sounds like a cheap pop single with a twang. It's just mediocre in a boring way that doesn't really do anything for me. Wallen's lyrics about wanting to love someone just don't click the way they should, and it's a shame because a song like this should really hit for me. It's fine, I guess, but it feels underwhelming.

"Dark Til Daylight" is one of the best songs on the album. I really love how this sounds, with the acoustic guitar at the beginning being a personal highlight. This song is about how he gets depressed when the sun sets because he realizes what could've been. I think it's a powerful statement of wasted potential that really just highlights how personal Wallen took this album. This is definitely one I'll keep listening to for a while.

Wallen ventures into gambling territory with "The Dealer", a collaboration with ERNEST. Considering how bad their last collab was, I was worried about this, but it ended up being pretty good. The main premise of this song is that both artists think they should spend less time worrying about their circumstances  ("the hands I'm dealt") and spend more time praying ("Talkin' to the dealer"). This is a pretty good track, which I find not much wrong with. 

“Leavin’s the Least I Could Do” suffers from both repetition and defeatism. Wallen sings about walking away from a relationship because he know it's not going to work out, a theme we’ve heard multiple times already and without any sense of evolution. Musically, it’s unremarkable, with the same midtempo pacing and instrumentation we’ve heard elsewhere on the album. Lyrically, it leans into resignation without reflection, which just makes it feel emotionally lazy. There’s nothing wrong with vulnerability, but without growth, it just loops.

I really like "Jack and Jill". I think it's a clever take on the nursery rhyme, making it about a couple that had issues due to Jack's alcohol problem and Jill's drug addiction. Jack eventually dies due to this problem and Jill kills herself with the pills in response, and... man. This is just dark. I think it's a good song because it tells a compelling story about the dangers of addiction, but this could be a rough one for a lot of people out there. I still think it's great, though.

I'm gonna save a lot of my talk for this song for later, but "I Ain't Comin' Back" is easily my favorite song on the album. Is it musically the best? Probably not. Is it lyrically the best? Absolutely not. I don't care. This song is awesome. Post Malone and Morgan Wallen strike gold that's somehow even better than "I Had Some Help", and I can't wait to discuss this one in full detail at a later time. I also discussed this in my Top 100 Most Listened Ranking, but I gave the same "I'm talking about this later" excuse there, so it won't add much detail. You can still read that article if you want, I'd appreciate that (:

"Nothin' Left" has one of the best double meaning titles on the album. There's nothing left inside his bottle of beer, but he also says "the girl I wouldn't trade for nothin' left". I really like the cleverness behind that, and I think it's poignant because he's just broken by this point. Unfortunately, I don't like how this song sounds. It feels more sour than it does sad, and I don't think it really works that well. This averages out to a fine score.

"Drinking Til It Does" is a piano-led ballad that I think is... fine. It doesn't do anything remotely special, but it has a decent sound and Wallen is really trying to let out the emotions here. This is about how he can't get the memory of this girl off his mind, so he keeps drinking until it goes away. It feels pretty standard for one of Wallen's songs, so I can see why it's hidden away at the end of the album instead of being a lead single or a beginning track.

“Smile” wants to be a heartfelt ballad, but it ends up flat and directionless. The song coasts along at a slow tempo with barely any dynamic shift, and the lyrics are just vague enough to feel emotionally empty. You can tell Wallen’s trying to tap into something raw, but the delivery is so monotonous that nothing really lands. This could’ve worked if it built up into something. Maybe a swelling instrumental, a vocal climax, anything. Instead, it just drifts by and leaves nothing behind. It's not offensively bad, but it's forgettable in the worst way.

"Working Man's Song" feels like Wallen's attempt to recreate the appeal of "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" without actually understanding that song whatsoever. Just like that song, this song is about someone who's working and feels done with it, saying that "trying to make a living isn't supposed to feel like dying". That's a reality for a lot of rural folks. They work factory jobs and do hard labor because that's the only way they can make a living, but it breaks their bodies down over time to the point they just don't feel as good as they used to. It's one of the more real songs on the album, so I'll give it props for that.

It's not a Morgan Wallen album if it's without the word "whiskey" in it. That'd be a challenge for him considering how many of his albums reference it. That's no different for "Whiskey In Reverse", which is just bad. He talks about how he wishes he could "drink whiskey in reverse" so his girl wouldn't have left him, and... dude. You keep making the same mistakes over and over again. I know it's music, but you've had issues with it in real life, so you need to get some help. My God. 

We're really just hitting a lull at the end of the album here. "Crazy Eyes" is another song that just doesn't work for me. It's about how something in this girl's eyes tempts Morgan and makes him want her. It doesn't sound good and I think this might have some of the most boring lyrics on this album. He even uses the metaphor of something being his kryptonite for the second time. Dude, if you can't go without repeating the same thing over and over across 37 tracks, you need to write less songs.

"LA Night" is better than the last two, I guess. I like the drum machine percussion throughout it, but the story feels like something he has to have already done before. It's about how after a night out in Los Angeles, he wouldn't be surprised if this girl finds herself in love with him and having bloodshot eyes. At this point in the album I just feel checked out, because this is another song that just doesn't hit, but at least the sound is decent. 

Then we get to... "Miami". Look, I had heard some awful things about this song before I listened to it, and I get it. The trap percussion is messy, the sample flip is not good, and Wallen brag-rapping about banging some Cuban chick is really just annoying, but... I don't hate it. There's a part of me that thinks it kinda works in a cynical kind of way. From an objective level, it's not good, but I get what it's going for. I don't think it's offensively bad the way a lot of other people do, but I'm not gonna say it's anything special. It's just bad in a normal way for a Wallen song. 

"Lies Lies Lies" was the first single released for the album way back in mid-2024, and I didn't think much of it then. I still don't think much of it now. This is just a worse version of Zach Top's "I Never Lie". It's about how he keeps telling himself these lies to get himself over this girl, but it's clearly not working. Just like the song, honestly. It's so sour and is just a slog to listen to. This kind of vibe can work, but it just is not good here. He should've just cut this one.

The album wraps up with "I'm A Little Crazy", which is an acoustic ballad about how insane the world is compared to him, and I honestly like it. I think it's a good closer to an album that really needed something like this to wrap it up. It just fills you with the relief you need when you listen to something this long. I think it works for what it is, and Wallen's performance here is pretty compelling. This is a good track.

That wraps up the 37-song tracklist of I'm the Problem. Now it's time to decide what I think of the album as a whole.

FINAL THOUGHTS.

I'm the Problem is mediocre. There's some really good, and there's some really bad, but it mostly just screeches out to be one of the single most meh songs I've ever listened to. That being said, I do think it does a good job portraying what Morgan is trying to convey. He's broken mentally, with his addiction to alcohol causing him to make bad decisions. Sometimes he's self-aware about it, but other times he just sings about those bad decisions and being perfectly happy with doing them. That distinction is what confuses me. He has songs where he really wants to change, but he refuses to. He has songs where he displays some pretty reprehensive behavior towards women, and he does nothing to actually address it and try to fix it.

Overall, when I tallied up the final score, it came around to near what I expected. In fact, the final score this album got makes perfect sense considering I've called this the single most mediocre album I've ever listened to. This album averaged out to exactly a 5/10. There were some good songs, there were some bad, but most of them were just there. I don't think it comes even particularly close to how good Dangerous and One Thing At A Time were, and the step-back in quality really concerns me as someone who's been a fan of his music for a good while. 

I'm one of the only people in the music reviewing community who actually loved the last one, and yet this one just feels so much worse to me in every way. Very few of the songs actually resonate with me the way they did before. Even despite that, though, I don't think the problem is that Morgan is getting worse. I think it's that the "mega-album" shtick might have its downsides. Releasing 73 different songs within 3 years is insane for any artist, and that leaves a lot of room for bad songs to get in. One Thing At A Time somehow managed to get away with only a few. This one had 10 songs that I rated at a 3/10 or below, including two songs that managed to get a 0/10. Despite that, it still had a number of good songs, with 8 songs receiving a 7/10 or above. I think it's just a mixed bag overall in quality, as there's a spectrum of how good the songs are that average out to being perfectly mediocre.

FINAL SCORE: 50/100

THE BEST AND THE WORST

This section will feature me listing my favorite songs and my least favorite songs from the album. It'll depend on album length how many I list for this. With an album this long, I think I'll go with my top 5 on both ends of the spectrum. This was tough to pick apart from the #1 and #2 for both lists, but I think I've narrowed it down to which songs I thought fit the best. 

THE TOP 5 BEST SONGS ON I'M THE PROBLEM

 5. "Jack and Jill"

4. "Dark Til Daylight"

3. "Kick Myself"

2. "Superman"

1. "I Ain't Comin' Back" (feat. Post Malone)

THE TOP 5 WORST SONGS ON I'M THE PROBLEM

5. "If You Were Mine"

4. "Crazy Eyes"

3. "Whiskey In Reverse"

2. "Just In Case"

1. "Kiss Her In Front Of You"

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I really hope you guys enjoyed this. I'm excited to start this series, as I think it'll be a nice change of pace from what I usually write. I've got new projects coming out soon, including the Top Ten Best Hit Songs of 2016 list and album reviews for Even In Arcadia by Sleep Token and MUSIC by Playboi Carti. With that being said, this is Lando from the Landoman Experiment, signing off. Have a good day.