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Towards the end of his 2026 Still the Problem Tour, Morgan Wallen confirmed he's been back in the studio and is working on his next chapter of music following I'm the Problem. We're breaking down four big things we're expecting from his new album.
Since 2021's Dangerous: The Double Album, Wallen has been keeping to a timeline of one album every two years, with One Thing At A Time arriving in 2023 and I'm the Problem in 2025. This means we can hopefully look forward to his next record in 2027.
With I'm the Problem cementing Wallen's status as one of the most dominant artists in today's musical landscape - across all-genres - there's a tremendous amount of chatter, buzz and anticipation ahead of what the Sneedville megastar does next.
After dropping the first single from his new era, ‘Been By Now’, in July 2026, Wallen revealed that this infectious track would be a cornerstone for his forthcoming body of work. We've compiled everything Wallen and some of his closest collaborators have said so far to help give us an idea of what we think his new project will look like. Here are our 4 biggest predictions for Wallen's next studio album.
1. A Tight Guestlist
Wallen has always kept his circle close, with the ‘Love Somebody’ hitmaker generally sticking with the same songwriters and producers, with a handful of outliers on each project.
But on I'm the Problem, really for the first time, we saw him looking outwards and testing out a genre-blurring collaboration with pop phenom Tate McRae, ‘What I Want’. He followed this up with the ‘Miami’ remix featuring Lil Wayne and Rick Ross.
However, while Wallen's link-up with McRae went No. 1, it also sparked a major backlash from McRae's fanbase for collaborating with Wallen, given his somewhat chequered past and conjecture about his political allegiance. Wallen famously remains tight-lipped about his previous controversies and his politics, and we imagine he won't have appreciated everything being dragged back up and speculated about, just because McRae's followers weren't happy with this particular duet.
What's more, Wallen revealed that BigXthaPlug was supposed to feature on the original version of ‘Miami’, but he didn't complete his verse on time. Wallen came across a little frustrated about this when he discussed it on Theo Von's This Past Weekend.
When considering the McRae kerfuffle and the BigX disappointment, you can't help but feel Wallen might decide he can't be bothered with all the hassle of outside collabs on his next project. We suspect he'll instead link up with his buddies, like HARDY, ERNEST and Eric Church, and maybe making room for one or two of his Sticks Management signees and 2026 tour-mates, like his good pal Gavin Adcock.
Wallen's producer, Charlie Handsome, outlined in an interview earlier this summer that his vision for this next chapter is to help Wallen get Pop Radio hits without features.
They did it with Post on ‘I Had Some Help’, and they did it with McRae on ‘What I Want’. If the mission is to hit No. 1 on these charts without the help of a mainstream artist, we imagine he won't be teaming up with any pop-stars on the new album.
2. A Pop-Driven Sound Built Around ‘Been By Now’
When closing out his 2026 Still the Problem Tour, Wallen admitted he was still figuring out exactly what he wanted to do with his next collection of songs - but one thing he did know was that this new chapter would revolve around the sound of ‘Been By Now’.
The ‘Thought You Should Know’ singer-songwriter explained, “It's a little bittersweet, because as we get close to the end of this tour, kind of the end of...this album's era, I guess you could say...I ain't really sure exactly what I'm gonna do next, but I do know that I've been in the studio, I've been making a lot of music. I'm excited about it. I don't know, the day that we wrote this song, I just kind of had a good feeling about it, and I wanted to based a lot of my next stuff around it”.
‘Been By Now’ is an undulating, synth-backed earworm in the mould of ‘Love Somebody’, and the fact that Wallen has cited this as the touchstone for his next chapter seems to cement the idea that he will be leaning further into a pop-friendly aesthetic.
As Handsome stressed, Wallen is able to explore other styles and genres, and it still feels grounded in country because of his distinctive drawl. ‘Been By Now’ has been a mainstay in the Billboard Hot 100 and has been performing incredibly well at Pop Radio since it came out, which only confirms that they're on the right track.
3. 40 Songs (At Least)
Ever since he dropped the 30-song Dangerous in 2021 - and in doing so, completely changed the country standard for albums - Wallen has caught flak for making his albums too long. But in classic Wallen fashion, this only seems to spur him on more, with One Thing At A Time being 36 songs, and I'm the Problem being 37.
The fact that I'm the Problem was one song longer - and really, this was only because of the 44-second ‘Interlude’ - felt like a middle-finger salute to all of Wallen's critics.
Since Dangerous, long albums have become the norm in modern country. With Wallen's friend and fellow music titan, Post Malone, teasing a new 40-song album, The Eternal Buzz, it feels like we're still very much in the era of lengthy country records.
Additionally, Wallen's approach has helped him boost streaming numbers and ensure his albums remain at the business-end of the Billboard 200. Over a year after its release, I'm the Problem sits inside the Top 5, while One Thing At A Time and Dangerous are both in the Top 25. Dangerous has spent 264 weeks on the chart. When compiling his new album, Wallen will surely be thinking, ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it’.
4. Wallen Finds a New Muse
While we don't envision the album's length changing too drastically, one thing we do see Wallen switching up is his subject matter. Wallen draws a lot of eye-rolls for the amount of songs he has about drinking, and I'm the Problem was no different, with a number of critics pinpointing this as a key weakness in an otherwise stellar project.
Over the past year or so, Wallen has been open about how he's been trying to drink less, especially while on tour, with his father emphasising how proud he is of his sobriety journey. We don't know whether he's tee-total, but it certainly seems he's leaning on alcohol a lot less frequently these days, making songs like ‘Drinking Til It Does’, ‘Dark Til Daylight’, ‘Whiskey In Reverse’ and ‘Revelation’ feel like snapshots into a past version of Wallen, when alcohol was perhaps an escape.
Of course, we don't for one minute think there won't be any drinking songs on Wallen's new album, and we imagine - based on ‘Been By Now’ - that heartbreak will still be a primary muse for him. But given how vocal he's been about his sobriety, we'd love to see this reflected in his music, in turn forcing him to flex his songwriting muscles and convey heartbreak through non-alcohol-related imagery.
One thing that is absolutely unquestionable, as outlined by a multitude of Wallen's collaborators in recent months, such as Handsome, Blake Pendergrass, Craig Wiseman, Dave Cohen and more, is the fact that Wallen always has a clear vision for how he wants his music to be, while still embracing teamwork. He's not afraid to colour outside the lines, as we've seen time and again on wonderfully creative and left-field songs like ‘Smile’ and ‘Miami’. So rest assured that, whatever his next chapter contains, it will sound exactly how Wallen wants it to.
