Getty Luke Bryan
Morgan Wallen took to the stage for the first time since his racial slur scandal.
Luke Bryan was performing with Jason Aldean and Tyler Hubbard when Wallen came onstage to sing “Whiskey Glasses” and “More Than My Hometown.”
In the words of Pop Culture, it’s “unclear” if Bryan knew that Wallen would be performing with them.
As seen in the video above, Aldean faced Bryan onstage and said, “A really good friend of mine is here backstage tonight. I don’t know if you know this.” Bryan then said, “Do I need another tequila shot to get through this?”
Here’s what you need to know:
Morgan Wallen: ‘I Promise to Do Better’
In February 2021, Wallen was recorded on video saying the n-word after a “rowdy” night with friends in Nashville, Tennessee, according to TMZ.
In the video, seen above, Morgan was ambling towards his home, and stated, “take care of this p****-ass mother******.” He then states, “take care of this p****-ass n*****.”
Wallen subsequently told TMZ, “I’m embarrassed and sorry. I used an unacceptable and inappropriate racial slur that I wish I could take back. There are no excuses to use this type of language, ever. I want to sincerely apologize for using the word. I promise to do better.”
Wallen Was Banned From the Billboard Music Awards
GettyMorgan Wallen and Keith Urban perform at All for the Hall: Under the Influence Benefiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum at Bridgestone Arena on February 10, 2020, in Nashville, Tennessee.
In April, Billboard shared that Wallen would not be attending the Billboard Music Awards.
Dick Clark Productions released a statement that read, “Morgan Wallen is a finalist this year based on charting. As his recent conduct does not align with our core values, we will not be including him on the show in any capacity (performing, presenting, accepting). It is heartening and encouraging to hear that Morgan is taking steps in his anti-racist journey and starting to do some meaningful work. We plan to evaluate his progress and will consider his participation in future shows.”
On February 10, Wallen uploaded a video, seen above, in which he apologized for his actions.
He stated, “The video you saw was me on hour 72 of a 72-hour bender.” He continued, “Obviously, the natural thing to do is to apologize further and just continue to apologize but because you got caught and that’s not what I wanted to do. I let so many people down. And [people] who mean a lot to me and give so much to me. And that’s just not fair.”
In July, Wallen sat down with GMA to discuss his actions. He shared that he spent 30 days in rehab and donated $500,000 to Black charities in the wake of his inappropriate behavior.
He stated of his album, Dangerous: The Double Album, “Before this incident my album was already doing well,” but “me and my team noticed that whenever this whole incident happened, that there was a spike in my sales. So we tried to calculate what the number of how much it spiked from this incident, and we got to a number somewhere around $500,000, and we decided to donate that money to some organizations, BMAC being the first one.”