“I’ve Said No to a Lot of Projects”: Morgan Wallen on How He Chooses Who to Collaborate With

Morgan Wallen is opening up about how he carefully picks and chooses which collaborations he does, with the Sneedville megastar revealing he's turned down a lot of duet offers.

Wallen's projects feature close-knit guestlists, with the ‘Thought You Should Know’ singer-songwriter preferring to work with his buddies, like HARDY, ERNEST and Eric Church.

But there have been exceptions, such as his pop-infused Tate McRae link-up, ‘What I Want’, from 2025's I'm the Problem, or his Chris Stapleton duet, ‘Only Thing That's Gone’, from 2021's Dangerous. More recently, Wallen joined forces with Ella Langley - his 2026 Still the Problem tour-mate - for the hugely popular ‘I Can't Love You Anymore’.

Given how Wallen is one of the biggest artists on the planet, you can imagine he has been inundated with collaboration requests. In an episode of his Morgan Wallen Radio, the ‘Last Night’ chart-topper reflects on how he decides which ones to say yes to.

“Well, for the most part, who is on my projects are people who are actually friends for me”, the ‘Just in Case’ crooner explains, before qualifying this by admitting, “There's been a couple where I've just been fans of that other artist, you know, where I'll have my team or I'll reach out personally, and say hey I think this song's perfect for you...blah blah blah, and they'll either say yes or they'll say no”.

Wallen emphasises that, although he or his team will sometimes send out a song to someone he's not pals with, generally, he prefers to keep his collaborations within his circle of buddies, “But for the most part, it's been my friends who I do songs with, and that's usually who I choose to work with on their projects as well”.

He makes it clear that, as you would expect, he's received a lot of requests over the years, “I've said no to a lot projects of other artists and I just, I stick to people I know”.

While it might sound like an insular mindset, especially in a town as collaborative as Nashville, it's this selective approach that has helped make Wallen's features and co-signs so much more meaningful. When Wallen appears on a song or works with another artist, it feels like a major moment, precisely because it's so rare that he deviates from his usual crew of HARDY, ERNEST and Eric Church.

WIth Wallen gearing up for a brand new chapter, which is set to revolve around ‘Been By Now’, you can't help but feel his next album will again feature a close-knit group of collaborators.

Especially given the furore he inadvertently sparked when he recruited Tate McRae to appear on ‘What I Want’, with McRae's fanbase accusing her of going ’MAGA’ as a result of the collaboration, we imagine Wallen will have felt a little burned by that process.

What's more, one of Wallen's go-to producers, Charlie Handsome, outlined in an interview earlier this summer that his vision for Wallen is to score Pop Radio No. 1s without features.

And while those eye-catching, unexpected collaborations are always fun, Wallen has such a great bond with the likes of HARDY and ERNEST that, as fans, we'd be very happy with a similar guestlist to that of One Thing At A Time and I'm the Problem.