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      Morgan Wallen’s ‘One Thing at a Time’ Is No. 1 for a Third Week

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      The country star’s hit-stuffed streaming blockbuster is just shy of one million equivalent sales. U2 opens at No. 5 with an album of acoustic rerecordings.Morgan Wallen is not budging from No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, with the country star’s latest hit-stuffed double album holding the top spot for a third week in a row.Wallen’s 36-track “One Thing at a Time” racked up the equivalent of another 209,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate, bringing its three-week total to just shy of one million. In its most recent week, it had 256 million streams and sold 12,500 copies as a complete package.Two years ago, Wallen’s last release, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” spent its first 10 weeks at No. 1, even amid a media controversy and temporary radio ban after Wallen was caught on video using a racial slur. Can “One Thing at a Time” match the success of its predecessor? That album’s success, by the way, is ongoing; this week “Dangerous” holds at No. 7, logging its 112th week in the Top 10.Also this week, SZA’s “SOS” climbs two spots to No. 2, and Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” rises three to No. 3; both are former No. 1s that got boosts from their creators being on tour. Miley Cyrus’s “Endless Summer Vacation” is No. 4.U2, the veteran Irish rock band, is No. 5 with “Songs of Surrender,” a retrospective project of mostly acoustic rerecordings of some of the group’s signature songs. It arrived with the promotion of a Disney+ documentary and the recent announcement of a concert residency this fall at a high-tech new venue in Las Vegas, the MSG Sphere.The most complete form of “Songs of Surrender” — standard on streaming services, and a “super deluxe” four-LP doorstopper — includes 40 songs over nearly three hours. The album opens with the equivalent of 46,500 sales, mostly from copies sold as a complete package. More

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      Kelsea Ballerini Is Ready for Lift Off

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      The country singer and songwriter has long tested Nashville’s boundaries while revealing herself to her listeners. Touring behind a recent album and a surprise EP, she’s finding new heights.Ever since Kelsea Ballerini saw Shania Twain soar into a theater on a flying motorcycle wearing a catsuit and closer-to-God hair, the rising country star has known she wanted to be a boundary-breaking daredevil. But, like Kelly Clarkson, she also wanted to be a bare-it-all open book — hitting the big notes and still cracking self-effacing jokes onstage in jeans and a T-shirt.On Ballerini’s latest tour, she’s got the glittery jumpsuit and the denim, the vulnerability — and the push she needed to lift off.Ballerini’s set includes upbeat, pop-inflected songs from her fourth album, “Subject to Change” from 2022, and adroitly crafted hits from her early days, like “Peter Pan” and “Love Me Like You Mean It,” that put her on the map in Nashville as a sassy young talent. But new heartbreak anthems from “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat,” a spare, emotional EP she dropped in February, after she went through a high-profile divorce from the Australian country singer Morgan Evans, supercharged the show. Fans full-throatedly sang along, having memorized lyrics that were only out in the world for a few weeks, exhaling the release along with her. Ballerini gladly shared the mic.“It’s not about me singing the song,” she said in an interview after the tour’s recent opening date. “It’s about us singing the song.”Over the past few months, Ballerini, 29, has entered new territory, including a potent performance on “Saturday Night Live,” her debut there. The EP has intensified interest in her personal life, as she was photographed with a new beau (the actor Chase Stokes) and joined the popular podcast “Call Her Daddy” to describe, in full girl talk detail, the unraveling of her relationship with Evans, whom she married when she was 24 and he was 32. It wasn’t easy to publicly air all this, Ballerini said, but “I don’t want to lose the openness that I’ve always tried to have.”Where once the country ideal — at least musically — was to “Stand By Your Man,” as Tammy Wynette famously put it, lately younger artists have been charting their wifely disappointments: Kacey Musgraves and Carly Pearce chronicled their respective relationships’ demises, too. Operating in the wake of songwriter-performers like Musgraves and Maren Morris, who upended Nashville’s traditional male tilt and pop suspicions, Ballerini is not coy about her career goals.“I want to play arenas,” she said — which she is, on an upcoming tour with Kenny Chesney. But, she continued, “I want to be the main draw. I want the pyrotechnics. I want to cross over, dare I say.”It was a day off, between “S.N.L.” and her tour, and Ballerini was cross-legged and barefoot on a chair in a Manhattan hotel room, her shearling-lined sandals tucked below. In forest colors and fuzzy corduroy sweatpants, she was cozy personified — a star that seemed soft to the touch. She’s a hugger, and an over-sharer. When I complimented the mane of blond hair beneath her pizza shop baseball hat, she explained that it was extensions.“I lost so much hair last year — just stress,” she said. “It’s growing back, in, like, little sprouts. It’s a whole thing.”Then she laughed. “I could’ve just said ‘thank you.’”Ballerini grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., the only child in a fairly religious household; she occasionally led the singing at worship service. Her rhythmic sensibility revealed itself early: Her mother has told her, she said, smiling, that even as a baby, she bounced along to music so intently that she would scoot her high chair clear across the room. At home, the stereo was tuned to Top 40 (thanks to her mother), and classic crooners (for her father).“Any time I smell Bolognese, I hear Tony Bennett,” Ballerini said, “because my dad would be cooking some beautiful Italian meal and blaring that all through the house.”Her parents split when she was 12 — she used to bad mouth their divorce, she said, but now that she’s gone through one herself, “I have a lot more grace for them” — and she found a refuge in songwriting. “It’s the truest love in my life,” she said.It helped her get through another trauma, when she witnessed the death of a classmate in a school shooting in 2008. By then, she had started voice lessons and picked up the guitar. She performed her first original song onstage at a recital in high school; she and her mother moved to Nashville when she was 15. “I just had this, like, stupid little knowingness,” she said, that she would find her way in.She filled her days studying tour documentaries and credits on CMT music videos, searching for names online to learn “who worked where, and what was a Sony, and who was a Hillary Lindsey,” the chart-topping songwriter. By 19, she was signed as a songwriter herself, to the independent label Black River Entertainment, where she remains. Within four years, she was a Grammy nominee.But being an artist with pop ambitions on an indie label has had its challenges, she admitted, and there was a learning curve to being a female artist in a field that’s often hostile to them. She was 21, with her first Top 5 single, just after “Tomato-gate” happened — the brouhaha over a radio consultant calling women merely the garnish on the scene — and she suddenly realized how many yearslong gaps there were between female stars. “I was naïve and unaware,” she said, “part of a conversation that I wasn’t even ready for.” For her last two albums, she has chosen more female collaborators. “It really freed up this new creative space for me,” she said.She makes a point to have at least one solo-written song on each project — for herself, and for the industry. “I have this insecurity that because I’m blond and I’m glittery and I like production, that people don’t take me seriously as a songwriter,” she said. With the solo song, “The underlying tone is, ‘Hey, I did this by myself. I didn’t have a man in the room.’”“I want to play arenas,” Ballerini said. “I want to be the main draw. I want the pyrotechnics. I want to cross over, dare I say.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesBallerini drafted “Rolling Up the Welcome Mat” mostly solo late last year, and finished and recorded it quickly, with just one collaborator. It came after Evans unexpectedly put out a single before their divorce was finalized last fall, claiming to be surprised at the breakup (his video is heavy on adoring female fans). Was her album a response to his track?“Yes and no,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have written a song like ‘Blindsided’” — which checks off their troubles and uses the chorus, “Were you blindsided / or were you just blind?” as a retort — “had I not been responding to something that was already out there.”Writing was a salve for her, she said, but she wasn’t expecting the music, with glimmers of the hip-hop syncopation that have been her hallmark, to connect so deeply.Alysa Vanderheym, a songwriter and producer whose credits include Little Big Town and Blake Shelton, worked with Ballerini on the surprise release. “She knew exactly what she wanted to say — she had her titles, her concepts,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s so unfiltered — she just went there, she didn’t even second guess it — which is so inspiring to me.”Ballerini was grateful, she said, that her label has never tamped down her ideas. In December, she called Patrick Tracy, the creative director she worked with on “Subject to Change,” and told him that, surprise, she was about to release a new EP, and that she wanted him to direct a short film to accompany it.Their timeline was brief, but Ballerini’s vision was so clear, down to a shot where a stack of dirty dishes collapses, that she was credited as a co-director. “The story line from the very beginning was hers and hers alone,” Tracy said.“The way she rallies her team around her ambition,” he added, “to me it’s sort of unmatched — it always feels collaborative.”For the EP, Ballerini said, she abandoned “the commercial country artist” part of her brain, the awareness of how things would fit into radio or playlists. The last track, “Leave Me Again,” is just her voice and acoustic guitar, plaintive and hopeful.“I feel really seen, and understood, as an artist right now,” she said.And she’s getting a taste of what she dreamed of. “I have a little baby hydraulic lift on this tour,” she said. “I think it brings me 10 feet in the air. And all of a sudden, my legs are, like, Bambi. I’m terrified. But I like it.” More

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      Morgan Wallen Holds at No. 1 With Strong Streaming Numbers

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      “One Thing at a Time” had the second-biggest streaming total for a country album, after its debut last week. The nine-woman K-pop group Twice opens at No. 2.After a big opening last week, the country star Morgan Wallen easily takes No. 1 again with his latest album, “One Thing at a Time,” holding off new releases from Miley Cyrus and the K-pop group Twice.The 36-track “One Thing at a Time” tops the Billboard 200 chart with the equivalent of 259,000 sales in the United States, including 308 million streams and 21,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to the tracking service Luminate.Its total is down 48 percent from last week, when it started with 501,000. But “One Thing at a Time” still had the second-best streaming week ever for a country album, topping even the debut of Wallen’s last blockbuster album, “Dangerous: The Double Album,” more than two years ago. (“Dangerous” remains a hit, landing at No. 7 this week.)Twice, which comprises nine women, opens at No. 2 — a new peak for the group — with “Ready to Be,” a seven-track EP. It had the equivalent of 153,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as a complete package, of which there were a variety of collectible offerings on physical media, including 11 CD versions and two vinyl LPs. Of the 145,500 copies of “Ready to Be” sold as complete units, 86 percent were on CD, according to Billboard. Songs from “Ready to Be” were also streamed 10 million times.Cyrus’s latest, “Endless Summer Vacation,” starts at No. 3 with 119,000 equivalent units, including 55,000 sales in album form and 81 million streams. SZA’s “SOS” falls two spots to No. 4 and Karol G’s “Mañana Sera Bonito” is No. 5. More

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      An Oklahoma Town’s Rescue Plan Has a Big Name: Reba McEntire

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      The country-music star is trying to revive her childhood home in Oklahoma with a restaurant, concert stage and lots of Reba memorabilia.ATOKA, Okla. — Year after year, eight million vehicles drove through this sleepy town just off U.S. Highway 75, which stretches from Texas to Canada. Almost none of them stopped.Atoka had fallen on hard times: Residents had moved away, and downtown buildings were decaying. Carol Ervin, its economic development director, began to plot how the city might lure even a small fraction of those drive-by travelers to visit.In the past two months, half a million guests have come to this southeastern Oklahoma community of 3,000. The reason can be summed up in four letters: Reba.Reba McEntire, the country-music star, grew up in Atoka County, and in January, she made good on a pivotal investment here. In a once-dilapidated former Masonic temple, she opened a restaurant, Reba’s Place — a 50-50 partnership with the Choctaw Nation, whose reservation includes Atoka. Upstairs is a gift shop selling Reba shot glasses and her clothing line for Dillard’s. Front and center is a concert stage, where Ms. McEntire headlined the grand opening with a performance of her greatest hits.In coming years, if all goes according to plan, Atoka will get an airport, a small water park, an amphitheater and boutique hotels. Several manufacturing and green energy companies are already setting up headquarters here.No one was more skeptical than Ms. McEntire when Ms. Ervin and her team broached the idea of a restaurant as a means of reigniting the local economy.“I thought it was a pipe dream,” the singer said over the phone from her home in Nashville as she prepared to kick off her 2023 nationwide tour. Yet “you have got to dream big to make it big.”Ms. McEntire signed on to the project because she thought it would help spur Atoka’s struggling economy.Choctaw NationCall it a convenient convergence: a music superstar, a well-resourced tribal nation, a heavily trafficked highway and an ambitious local government. “I put my money in on them,” Ms. McEntire said, “and they made things happen that I never thought could have happened.”The project is not so far-fetched in Oklahoma, which has a number of other celebrity-fronted businesses. In Pawhuska, where the Osage Nation is headquartered, the Pioneer Woman Mercantile, a restaurant opened seven years ago by the Food Network star Ree Drummond, draws about 6,000 guests a day. The country singers Blake Shelton and Toby Keith own bars within a two-hour drive of Atoka.But Ms. McEntire, 67, is arguably a bigger attraction than the others, with a 47-year career and 24 No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. She has starred in films, Broadway musicals and several TV series, including her own hit sitcom, “Reba.”On a Saturday afternoon this month, that star power was on display in downtown Atoka. Crowds of McEntire fans — many of them dressed in glittery tops and tasseled jackets to mimic her signature style — lined up outside a stolid three-story brick building whose only trace of glitz was a tall red electric sign reading “Reba’s Place.” The wait time for a table was four hours.Inside was a shrine to the singer. Under a soaring ceiling, diners packed into booths made from old church pews and gazed at posters showcasing Ms. McEntire’s albums, movies and shows, which have traded on her friendly, just-plain-folks image.Dresses from Ms. McEntire’s most famous performances are on display in the restaurant.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesOn the third floor, guests can shop for all manner of Reba T-shirts.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMemorabilia from Ms. McEntire’s concerts, movies and television shows cover the restaurant’s walls.Zerb Mellish for The New York Times“Reba is about faith, she is about family, she is about culture,” said Gary Batton, the chief of the Choctaw Nation, the third-largest tribe in the United States. He knew Ms. McEntire from her performances in Choctaw casinos, and jumped at the chance to partner with her again.Diners lucky enough to snag a table dug into slabs of chicken-fried steak slathered in a pleasantly sweet gravy, and pinto beans served with a towering wedge of cornbread — Southern foods that reflect Ms. McEntire’s life and career. They ogled the bedazzled red dress the singer wore on her 1995 tour, one of several outfits on display. Onstage, a local musician, Wyatt Justice, crooned country songs next to a wall-size American flag.“I saw the big sign and then kind of slowed down,” said Donita Clay, who had driven about 90 miles from Broken Bow, Okla. “I am a Reba fan. Who isn’t?”Down the street, Boggy Bottom Antiques & Collectibles was filled with customers browsing “Dolly/Reba 2024” T-shirts while they waited for a table. Tracy Jones, a co-owner, said sales had at least doubled in the last two months. At the Vault, a wine bar across the street from Reba’s Place, Saturday sales had quadrupled, said the owner, Janny Copeland.“We are getting a Starbucks,” she said. “I don’t care what anybody says, we wouldn’t get a Starbucks here if Reba’s wasn’t coming here.”Atoka wasn’t always a small town. In the 20th century, it was home to a booming coal-mining industry and a stop along the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway. In the 1970s, the furniture retailer Ethan Allen and the Wrangler jeans company opened factories in Atoka, but closed them in 2006. The city lost almost 600 jobs. Last October, according to census data, nearly one in five Atoka County residents lived in poverty.“A city is a living, breathing entity,” Ms. Ervin said. “It is either growing or it is dying. And we were dying.”She said she tried to persuade companies to set up shop in town, but they told her, “We need a place where our people will want to live, and that is not Atoka, Oklahoma.”A downtown street is named for Ms. McEntire, who grew up in Atoka County.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesSince opening in January, Reba’s Place has attracted 500,000 visitors.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesCarol Ervin, Atoka’s economic development director, saw Reba’s Place as the first step in an ambitious plan to redevelop the city. Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesAbout five years ago, Ms. Ervin and other city officials, including Mayor Brian Cathey, began working on a plan to revive downtown. Then the pandemic hit. Ms. McEntire moved home to take care of her mother, who was dying of cancer, and spent several months here in quarantine.The singer had a history of helping out locally. Starting in 1987, she staged several concerts in nearby Denison, Texas, to raise money for the Texoma Medical Center, whose rehabilitation clinic is known as Reba Rehab. Now she was looking for “a legacy project,” Ms. Ervin said.Presented with the proposal for Reba’s Place, Ms. McEntire agreed to put up half the money, and the Choctaw Nation provided the remainder. The total investment was “several million,” said Kurtess Mortensen, the restaurant’s chef and the Nation’s executive director of retail, brand and merchandising. Any profits will be split between the Nation and Ms. McEntire, but Mr. Mortensen said, “This is not going to be a big moneymaker.”Ms. Entire concurred. “I know it is a very tough industry.,” she said. “There is more to life than money.”The Choctaw Nation draws most of its revenue from its 22 casinos throughout Oklahoma, and plans to spend the earnings from Reba’s Place on health, education and housing initiatives for the reservation. In Atoka, the Nation has already established housing, a health clinic, a community center and opened franchises of chain restaurants, like Chili’s.At Reba’s Place, about half of the 134 employees are members of a federally recognized tribe. The restaurant also serves beef raised and slaughtered on the Choctaw Nation, and its gift shop will soon sell items made by tribal members. Mr. Batton, the chief, said he hopes to open more locations of Reba’s Place in other parts of the reservation.Gary Batton, the chief of the Choctaw Nation, said Reba’s Place is bringing jobs and revenue to the reservation, which includes Atoka.Choctaw NationThe city has also invested in the project. The Atoka City Industrial Development Authority bought the building for $200,000 in 2020, then turned it over to the restaurant in return for an equal value in payments and services. Reba’s Place also receives rebates on a portion of city sales tax. (Ms. McEntire provided the restaurant with her money, name and memorabilia, but is not involved in daily operations.)Mr. Mortensen, the chef of Reba’s Place, is no stranger to bringing a big-time restaurant to a small town. He ran the Pioneer Woman Mercantile for five years.With the Mercantile, he said, “we were creating Disneyland, Main Street U.S.A.” But many Pawhuskans were unhappy with the sudden surge in traffic. In Atoka, Mr. Mortensen has held several community meetings to allow residents to voice concerns.“I have been yelled at and thanked and everything in between,” he said.One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is chicken-fried steak, a favorite of Ms. McEntire.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesThe charcuterie comes with country ham and boiled peanut hummus, and is served on a board shaped like Oklahoma.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesThe cooks at Reba’s Place make well above the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13.Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMany people worried that there wouldn’t be enough parking. But others were excited by the prospect of jobs that paid more than the state and federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. At Reba’s Place, servers start at $8 an hour, cooks start at $14 and every full-time employee is eligible for health benefits.Before she was hired as a server at Reba’s Place, Christy Pittman ran a spa that she had to shut down when the pandemic started.“I went to college, I had the degrees, I had everything I needed,” she said. But in Atoka, “there just wasn’t enough quality jobs.” She now makes enough to get her nails done.Wyatt Delay, who works in the gift shop, said he was amazed by how many people had traveled from outside the state to visit. “We have had somebody from the Virgin Islands, New York, Michigan, Oregon, Washington State.”Holly Gleason, a music critic in Nashville, said she wasn’t surprised, as Ms. McEntire has one of the widest audiences of any country star. “Everybody agrees on Reba: Black, white, Native American, Asian, L.G.B.T.Q., Bible-thumping Christians,” she said.And while other country musicians have collaborated with national corporations to open their establishments, Ms. McEntire chose a local partner in the Choctaw Nation. “She is really making it a tried-and-true, this-is-who-we-are experience,” Ms. Gleason said.Still, several locals said they can’t afford to eat at Reba’s Place. “Unless there were more cheaper prices for us common folk, I won’t be going over there,” said Ruby Bolding, a retired artist. She was eating dinner at Cazadorez, a Mexican restaurant where steak fajitas cost $12.99. At Reba’s Place, the chicken-fried steak is $27.“But that doesn’t mean I am not glad it is here,” she added, “because it does bring in a lot of people. I love Reba, and I so relate to her.”The illuminated sign for Reba’s Place is visible from U.S. Highway 75. Zerb Mellish for The New York TimesMax Lane, a retired teacher who was attending service at Cornerstone Church — where Ms. McEntire’s brother-in-law Mark Eaton is the pastor — said a “fancy” spot like Reba’s Place didn’t attract him. “I would rather go to the Dairy Queen.”Ms. McEntire defended the restaurant’s prices. “It is not quick, out of a bag, throw it in a microwave — it is quality, handmade food,” she said.Plenty of others agree. In February, Reba’s Place made about $130,000 a week in revenue, and since the restaurant started taking reservations in early March, “people have been calling pretty constantly,” Mr. Mortensen said. This month, a speakeasy will open on the third floor.Could Reba’s Place grow to become the next Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Tennessee amusement park? “I don’t know if I could ever touch that,” Ms. McEntire said.Ms. Ervin, who helped hatch the project, is more optimistic. “I think Reba’s could be bigger than Pawhuska or Tishimingo,” she said, referring to Ms. Drummond’s and Mr. Shelton’s businesses. With the highway running through it, Atoka already has more drive-by traffic than those towns.And most important, she said, it has Reba.Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Taylor Swift’s ‘Lover’ Outtake, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear songs from Alison Goldfrapp, 100 gecs, Luke Combs and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Starting next week, Lindsay Zoladz will be writing a new newsletter devoted to music discovery. Sign up below!Taylor Swift, ‘All of the Girls You Loved Before’Here’s Taylor Swift at her most forgiving. Of course her guy has a past, and so does she, but she’s willing to consider that a learning experience. “Every woman you know brought you here,” she reasons. “All the Girls You Loved Before” — no relation to a similarly titled Willie Nelson-Julio Iglesias hit — have just “made you the one I’ve fallen for.” The previously unreleased track from her “Lover” era is one of four songs, the rest re-recordings, Swift put out on Friday ahead of the start of her Eras Tour. Its easy-rolling beat and doo-wop chord progression underline the eternal cycle of falling in and out of love before finding The One. JON PARELESFeist, ‘Borrowed Trouble’Leslie Feist makes boisterous, joyful noise on “Borrow Trouble,” the latest single from her upcoming album, “Multitudes.” Atop a bed of echoing, droning strings that recall, unexpectedly, the John Cale era of the Velvet Underground, the Canadian singer-songwriter bemoans the entrenched anxiety that follows from day to day: “Even before your eyes are open,” she sings, “the plot has thickened ’round your fear.” In the song’s final minute she finds potent catharsis, flinging her cares to the wind as she lets loose some primal screams: “Trouble!” LINDSAY ZOLADZAlison Goldfrapp, ‘So Hard So Hot’On May 12, Alison Goldfrapp — the longtime voice of the beloved electro-pop duo Goldfrapp — will release her first solo album, “The Love Invention.” Its debut single, “So Hard So Hot,” is a blissed-out dance floor reverie, as shimmery synths and Goldfrapp’s breathy vocals drift over a thumping beat. “Don’t know why, don’t know why, don’t know why we love this way,” she sings, before deciding the best course is not to ask too many questions but simply lose herself in the rapture of the groove. ZOLADZTiwa Savage, Ayra Starr and Young Jonn, ‘Stamina’Here’s a friendly challenge to men: “You gonna need more stamina,” the Nigerian songwriters Tiwa Savage and Ayra Starr declare. In the programmed, crisply percussive track, shared with the male voice of Young Jonn, they sing about ecstasy enabled by permission: deeply carnal but ethical. PARELES100 gecs, ‘Dumbest Girl Alive’“10,000 gecs,” the long-awaited major-label debut from the hyperpop hellions 100 gecs, opens with a pretty hilarious sonic joke: a sample of the nostalgic and evocative THX Deep Note, as if to say, 100 gecs: Now in Glistening Hi-Fi. Even with a bigger budget, though, a scrappy, anarchic spirit and the duo’s unpredictable sense of humor course throughout the exhilarating album, which features a dark, snaking ditty sung from the perspective of a serial killer and a song that sounds like Less Than Jake covering Crazy Frog. The crunching, Godzilla-sized riffs and absurdist one-liners (“put emojis on my grave”) of the first track, “Dumbest Girl Alive,” set the scene for the album’s loving embrace of alternative rock while slyly shooting a confetti cannon at the haters: “I’m smarter than I look,” Laura Les sings, in a cadence that’s almost cartoonishly melodic. “I’m the dumbest girl alive.” ZOLADZMatthew Herbert featuring Theon Cross, ‘The Horse Has a Voice’The composer and producer Matthew Herbert often constructs his music around a set of found sounds — industrial, animal, human, urban. His album due in May, “The Horse,” uses instruments made from a horse’s skeleton and hair, along with the London Contemporary Orchestra, jazz musicians and sampled horse sounds. “The Horse Has a Voice” features Herbert playing a flute made from a thigh bone, the orchestra and the tuba player Theon Cross. It’s a fast (around 151 beats per minute), steady-thumping stomp, with handclaps, a huffing thighbone-flute riff, gusts and flurries from the orchestra and leaping, scurrying tuba improvisations — frantic and relentless, high-tech and primitive. PARELESPieta Brown and JT Bates, ‘Thing or 2’“Thing or 2” drifts in and out of formlessness. Pieta Brown — the daughter of the longtime Iowan folk songwriter Greg Brown — sings about love and trust over the producer JT Bates’s edgeless electronic chords and sputtering 6/4 beats. “In my heart you sing clear and bright/It makes me feel like things will be all right,” she intones, convincing both herself and anyone listening. PARELESLuke Combs, ‘5 Leaf Clover’The country star Luke Combs perfects the humblebrag in “5 Leaf Clover.” It’s a sturdy waltz that exults in a good life: hometown, partner, friends, a truck in the driveway, healthy parents and “a fridge full of cold beer,” not to mention a tail-wagging dog. The track is grounded in country, complete with fiddle fills, but it’s also pointed toward a wide pop audience. PARELESEsther Rose featuring Hurray for the Riff Raff, ‘Safe to Run’“How does it feel to blow a kiss to the wind?” the singer-songwriter Esther Rose wonders on “Safe to Run,” a poignant country-folk song with a wandering spirit. Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff harmonizes with Rose on the chorus, on which the pair dispense some bittersweet wisdom: “You know there’s no place safe to run/Angels surround everyone.” ZOLADZ More

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      The Return of Morgan Wallen (Who Never Went Away)

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe third album by the country music superstar Morgan Wallen, the 36-song “One Thing at a Time,” just debuted at the top of the Billboard album chart, with the equivalent of 501,000 units. It is the fifth biggest streaming debut, behind only releases by Taylor Swift and Drake. Its success is an extension of the dominance of his earlier work, especially the 2021 release “Dangerous: The Double Album,” which has been the emblematic and most popular country album of the 2020s.Wallen’s success still comes under the cloud of the 2021 incident in which he was caught on tape using a racial slur. Though he was briefly removed from country radio at the time, he has since been restored, and he remains a touring force.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the nature of Wallen’s fame and the scope of his punishment; the ways in which he — perhaps inadvertently — weaponizes culture war; and the outsized meaning behind his light experimentation with genre.Guest:Kelefa Sanneh, a staff writer at The New YorkerConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Morgan Wallen Returns to No. 1 With ‘One Thing at a Time’

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      The pop-country singer, who was briefly reprimanded by the industry after using a racial slur, has another blockbuster regardless: the 36-song “One Thing at a Time.”Two years after being momentarily shunned by the music industry — but not most listeners — for using racist language, the pop-country singer Morgan Wallen has another blockbuster album on his hands: “One Thing at a Time,” his third LP, debuts at No. 1 this week on the Billboard chart with the largest sales of the year so far.“One Thing at a Time” moved the equivalent of 501,000 units since its release on March 3, including sales, streams and downloads, according to the tracking service Luminate, making it the most successful debut since Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” sold 1.6 million last fall. Wallen’s total included 498 million plays on streaming services across the album’s 36 tracks — enough for fifth ever on the weekly streaming list and the most for an album not by Swift or Drake.The continued commercial dominance for Wallen, 29, a native of eastern Tennessee, comes after the bumpy ride that surrounded the release of his previous album, “Dangerous,” but never adversely affected engagement with his music. Anointed as country’s next mega-headliner and crossover hope, Wallen had an instant smash with “Dangerous” in January 2021, but saw his industry promotion paused after he was caught on video casually using a racial slur amid what he said later was “hour 72 of a 72-hour bender.”Still, “Dangerous” racked up 10 weeks at No. 1 and still sits at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 — its 110th nonconsecutive week in the Top 10. (The only album with more appearances there is the original cast recording of “My Fair Lady” with 173, according to Billboard.)Like “Dangerous,” which featured 30 tracks on its original version, “One Thing at a Time” is notable for its length, coming in at nearly two hours across its 36 vaguely regretful drinking and love songs, giving listeners on streaming services plenty to choose from.A move more commonly associated with rap releases, the seemingly endless album targeted at digital audiences has become a common industry tactic, with only four No. 1 albums in the last 12 months coming in at fewer than 12 songs, Billboard noted. “One Thing at a Time” has more songs than any chart-topper except the “Encanto” soundtrack in that same time frame. Just 24,000 units of the Wallen album’s equivalent sales total were physical copies of its two-disc CD, with more than 75 percent of listener activity coming from streaming.Riding the album-release momentum, Wallen’s single “Last Night” hit No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart on Monday, up from No. 5. This week, songs from “One Thing at a Time” occupy half of the Hot 100’s Top 10, a first for a country singer.On the album chart, SZA’s former No. 1 “SOS” holds at No. 2 with 82,000 units after 10 nonconsecutive weeks on top; Karol G’s “Mañana Será Bonito,” which was No. 1 last week, falls to No. 3 with 60,000 units; Kali Uchis’s “Red Moon in Venus” arrives at No. 4 with 55,000 units; and Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 5 with 48,000. More

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      The Predictable Return of Morgan Wallen on ‘One Thing at a Time’

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      Whiskey and women dominate the 36 new songs on “One Thing at a Time” from the controversial and resiliently popular country star.Morgan Wallen isn’t about to tamper with a winning musical formula. The biggest country star of the 2020s — and one of the biggest stars in pop, period — sticks to exactly what has already worked for him on his new album, “One Thing at a Time.” Its 36 songs — yes, 36 — show abundant craftsmanship and barely a hint of new ambition or risk.The dozens of new songs are variations on scenarios from Wallen’s two previous albums, “If You Know Me” from 2018 and “Dangerous: The Double Album” from 2021. Nearly every song on the album mentions drinking. Plenty of them revolve around breakups: some with regret, some with relief. Pickup trucks and chewing tobacco get name-checked. Life in rural eastern Tennessee — bars, fishing, back roads, moonshine, boots, the Bible — is a point of pride and a yardstick for whether a partner is worth keeping, especially if she’s a city gal.The two years between albums were a roller coaster for Wallen. Soon after “Dangerous” was released, he was caught on video using a racial slur, which caused his label to suspend him (temporarily), some streaming services and the CMT cable channel to drop his music (temporarily) and the Academy of Country Music Awards to remove his name from its 2021 ballot.But it was barely a speed bump. Wallen had an unlikely career path. He grew up in Sneedville, Tenn., outside Knoxville, and in 2014 he lost on “The Voice” but got his chance anyway. He barnstormed his way to recognition. After his racial slur went public, he apologized on social media, calling the incident “hour 72 of a 72-hour bender,” saying that he was meeting with Black organizations and adding, “I’ve got many more things to learn, but I already know that I don’t want to add to any division.”Soon his music was streaming again, and “Dangerous” became one of the best-selling albums of 2021, certified for four million sales in the United States. Late in 2021, Wallen was featured on a hip-hop single by the rapper Lil Durk, “Broadway Girls,” singing about the temptresses of Nashville’s Lower Broadway honky-tonks.In 2022, Wallen toured arenas, and the Academy of Country Music gave “Dangerous” its award as album of the year. His combination of proud rural roots and well-calibrated arena country was unstoppable.So why change what worked? On “One Thing at a Time,” a modern Nashville product with many contributors, Wallen largely collaborates with and draws on songwriters who have supplied him before. He also retains the producer, Joey Moi, who has been with him since his debut album. The songwriting teams with and behind Wallen return to familiar motifs: barroom neon (“Neon Star”), the red letters of the Bible (“I Wrote the Book”), the 865 area code of eastern Tennessee (“Tennessee Numbers”) and specifying just what qualifies as “country” (“Ain’t That Some”).There’s ample skill on display on the new album. Old-school country-music wordplay is at the core of songs like “Days That End in Why” and “You Proof,” both about trying to drink away regrets, and “Wine Into Water,” a ballad that has its narrator proffering some Napa cabernet after a fight, hoping to turn “this wine into water under the bridge.” In “Keith Whitley,” song titles from the country singer who died in 1989 are woven into a whiskey-soaked plaint about lost love. And in “Everything I Love,” set to a clip-clop beat that harks back to Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, Wallen shrewdly presents all of his country bona fides while denouncing the ex he showed them to; she was from a “high-rise town” and now “I can’t take my Silverado down them roads we used to ride.”Moi, who previously produced Nickelback, makes every track gleam, using overarching pedal steel guitar and Wallen’s proud Tennessee drawl to mark the music as country while cannily drawing on Eagles, Tom Petty, the arena marches of U2 and even hip-hop. The ticking, twitchy drum-machine sounds of trap and R&B and the cadences of melodic rap show up in songs like “Sunrise” and “180 (Lifestyle),” which credits its hook to the 2014 hip-hop hit “Lifestyle” by Rich Gang featuring Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan, while its lyrics refer back to “Broadway Girls.”But over the lengthy course of the album, the songs tend to cycle through just a handful of approaches. Eventually, the nasal grain of Wallen’s singing starts to feel like Auto-Tune or another studio effect.Now and then, a human voice peeks out of the country machine. In the album’s title track, the brisk beat and layered rhythm guitars are pure Fleetwood Mac while Wallen sings, “I’ve got a lot of habits I gotta kick,” but just one at a time; he’s sticking to whiskey, nicotine and amphetamines to get through breaking up. Wallen gets casually surly in “Hope That’s True,” snarling at a Mercedes-driving, city-loving ex-girlfriend who “got drunk one night and told me I was white trash,” a pushback that suggests he knows the power of words.The album takes a turn for the devout as it’s about to end. In “Don’t Think Jesus,” a guy who “starts writing songs ’bout whiskey and women” and falls into “chasing the devil through honky-tonk bars” finds consolation through prayer. In “Outlook,” he’s rescued from “going toe to toe with the devil” by someone “up there” and by “an angel by my side.”The album ends with “Dying Man,” a country power ballad about stardom and a self-destructive streak; although Wallen didn’t write it, it’s tailored to him. The singer compares himself to Elvis Presley and Hank Williams as a “set-on-dying man” who’s saved by the right woman: “I never believed in angels ’til one believed in me,” he sings. But songs about whiskey and women are clearly a habit he’s not about to kick.Morgan Wallen“One Thing at a Time”(Big Loud/Mercury/Republic) More