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This, former arch-nemeses Gavin Adcock and Charley Crockett stunned the country world when they shared photos of them burying the hatchet and laughing over drinks.
It's a heartwarming development in a year-long feud that, at times, turned quite nasty. But rather than being a standalone reconciliation, this is symptomatic of today's country music zeitgeist, one that has also seen Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard put their very public dispute to bed at long last, and reunite as Florida Georgia Line.
Modern country's rebellious phase is over, and the photos of Adcock and Crockett feel like the final nails in the coffin. For much of the late 2010's and early 2020's, fans glamourised and romanticised artists that had reputations for their wild, chaotic and - in the cases of Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan - controversial personas.
During this period, earning a mugshot after a brief stint in jail was treated like a badge of honour. Fans would show up to Wallen concerts wearing t-shirts emblazoned with one of his mugshots, while Acock proudly sold thousands of his own tees with his 2025 mugshot on the front, generating a reported $150,000 in revenue as a result. Adcock leaned into it more than anyone, with the promotional campaign around 2025's ‘Morning Bail’ based on a dramatised version of his arrest.
Bryan's arrest became another high-profile moment, with fans making light of the footage and many following the example of Wallen's fanbase by making t-shirts. Koe Wetzel, meanwhile, wrote a song about the date of his arrest for public intoxication, ‘February 28, 2016’, a day that is now championed as the unofficial ‘Koe Wetzel Day’. This year, the ‘High Road’ hitmaker successfully campaigned for his hometown of Pittsburgh, Texas to make February 28th an official holiday.
And let's be clear, getting arrested is nothing new in country music. Many of the legendary outlaw artists, like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, all had brushes with the law, and generally, this only added to the mystique around them.
But now, it feels like this rebellious, outlaw aesthetic is going out of fashion, and the once-mocked ‘nice guys and gals’ of country music are coming back into favour.
The criticism has often been levelled at Wallen that, while his talent is undeniable, his initial explosion in popularity in 2021 was boosted, at least in part, by his run of controversies, ranging from his public intoxication arrest to his racial slur incident. While he was initially blacklisted, many listeners started to see the Sneedville megastar as a figurehead for an anti-establishment, middle-fingers-in-the-air brand of country music, something he's played into over the years. Listening to his music became its own form of rebellion against the powers that be.
Ever since the fallout from his chair-throwing debacle in April 2024, Wallen's branding has subtly changed. The rare times he does agree to an interview or podcast appearance, he talks about how he doesn't really drink much anymore, he's keeping shape for his tours, and he's working on being a good father to Indigo. Gone are the smirks and sniggers about his Friday night behaviour and rowdy, unruly antics.
And again, this isn't just a standalone case of Wallen himself growing up. We're seeing the same with Adcock, who, barely a year ago, was viewed by many as a more untamable version of Wallen. Every photo from his concerts saw Adcock shirtless, Jack Daniel’s bottle in hand, chucking beers from a Coors Light 12-pack into the crowd.
Adcock was the ultimate agent provocateur. Any time any artist weighed in on...well, pretty much any topic, Adcock would be ready and waiting in the comments section. Whether it was repeatedly sending shots at Zach Bryan about his treatment of his fans, squaring up to Nickelback's sound engineer or ruffling the feathers of alt-country favourites like Crockett and Benjamin Tod, Adcock became synonymous with his chaotic, volatile presence, both online and at his live shows.
But now, Adcock is pally with Crockett, and whenever Bryan's name came up during the rollout for his new album, The Day I Hang It Up, he generally avoided any inflammatory quips, even suggesting he'd be open to one day collaborating with him.
Meanwhile, Bryan himself has also toned down his once incendiary online behaviour. From 2020 onwards, it felt like the ‘Something in the Orange’ crooner was always one tweet away from disaster, whether he was drunkenly praising Ye over Taylor Swift or criticising whichever Nashville artist he was upset with at the time.
A year or so ago, Bryan was persona non grata, with the Oklahoma native struggling to brush Brianna LaPaglia's troubling accusations of emotional abuse and an attempted $12 million NDA under the rug. It was the icing on the cake of years of controversies, with many perceiving Bryan's public standing to be unsalvageable.
But now, Bryan is viewed as a settled-down married man, who rarely posts on social media, other than to celebrate his wife Samantha's paintings, while Samantha regularly takes to Instagram to paint a picture of Bryan as a sweet, gentle, adoring husband.
The point isn't to question which portrayal is more accurate. Rather, it's just to show that Bryan, like Wallen and Adcock, seems to be eschewing the unpredictable, off-the-rails aesthetic he was pushing - intentionally or not - for much of the 2020's. Of course, that's not to say he doesn't still court controversy, but these days it's mainly just for speaking out on politics, rather than inebriated tweets.
And then there's Sam Hunt, who was one of the first accidental proponents of ‘Mugshot Country’, with Hunt being arrested for driving drunk down the wrong side of the road. Now, we hardly hear from the ‘Body Like a Back Road’ chart-topper, but when we do, he seems to be in full dad-mode with little-to-no-interest in the spotlight. Wetzel is much the same, with his 2026 album, Night Champion, depicting a much much maturer protagonist, and his interviews mirroring Wallen's as he discusses quitting whiskey, partying less and focussing on fatherhood.
This could all be put down to the individuals simply maturing and growing up. And this would be the end of it, if we were seeing a new wave of rowdy troublemaking country prodigies coming through. But in reality, the younger artists now dominating the airwaves are part of a less rowdy and much more wholesome movement.
The biggest country album of 2026, Ella Langley's Dandelion, revolves around Langley's growth after her anxiety struggles. Her setlists are punctuated by heartfelt speeches about finding faith, and encouraging attendees to love and accept themselves.
In a new era that is being dominated by women, the petty in-fighting and envious feuding that defined much of the past decade has been replaced by a heartwarming sense of camaraderie. Any interview with Langley, Lainey Wilson, Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Kelsea Ballerini and Megan Moroney will include a shout-out to other women in the genre, adding to this spirit of lifting each other up rather than succumbing to media pressure attempting to pit them against one another.
With Wilson in particular, it feels as though there's been an intangible shift in attitude in recent months. While the ‘Heart Like a Truck’ trailblazer was often maligned for being too middle-of-the-road and, if anything, too uncontroversial. Now, influencers and outlets are hailing how she has become a beacon of light and kindness at the pinnacle of the genre. Similarly, Luke Combs - whose introspective Fathers & Sons album caught flak for not containing the hell-raising, Miller-Lite-chugging anthems in the mould of ‘Beer Never Broke My Heart’ - is now praised for his evolution, rather than being accused of being boring.
And it's the same for the new dudes. The younger artists coming through, such as Max McNown, Hudson Westbrook, Vincent Mason, Sam Barber, Joshua Slone and Dylan Gossett, have not had any kind of controversies or reckless, wild, alcohol-fuelled debacles, nor are there any high-profile beefs, feuds or spats between them.
By the looks of it, country music is becoming, well, wholesome again. ‘Mugshot Country’ is disappearing in the rearview mirror, with its primary flag-bearers and the next generation of stars showing little interest in this self-destructive, ‘rockstar’ lifestyle.
These things tend to come in waves, and there'll come a time where the antics of young Wallen, Wetzel, Adcock and Bryan are once again romanticised as a new upstart storms onto the charts. But for now, let's just take a moment to appreciate how peaceful, wholesome and good-natured the modern country music scene generally feels (bar a few Riley Green-related dramas...). When Adcock and Crockett shared that photo, fans took to the comments to say the same thing they said when Florida Georgia Line got back together months earlier: the country music world is healing. We can certainly think of worse ‘waves’ to get behind.
