Morgan Wallen is found himself in the midst of controversy over the past couple of weeks thanks to a video that captured him using a racial slur with friends. Despite this, it hasn’t stopped the singer’s recent success on the charts as his sophomore album, Dangerous: The Double Album, kept its No. 1 position on the Billboard 200 chart dated February 20. The project tallied an additional 150,000 units thanks to 107,000 streaming equivalent album units and 37,000 pure album sales. In addition to retaining his crown on the charts, Wallen’s 2018 album, If I Know Me, made its top-ten debut coming in at No. 10.
Dangerous is just the third album in the last 12 months to spend five weeks at No. 1 on the charts. The other two projects to accomplish this were Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Lil Baby’s My Turn, which were the two most popular albums of 2020. Wallen’s sophomore effort is also the first country album to land five total weeks at No. 1 since Taylor Swift’s Red. The last country album to spend its first five weeks atop the charts was Shania Twain’s Up, which accomplished this between December 7, 2002 and January 4, 2003.
The singer’s return to No. 1 comes after he shared a five-minute Instagram apology video for his use of a racial slur earlier this month. “The video you saw was me on hour 72 of 72 of a bender, and that’s not something I’m proud of either,” he said at one point. Elsewhere, he acknowledged the severity of his actions and revealed some of the work he’s done in the last week to turn things around.
“Since that video was taken, I’ve been sober for nine days,” Wallen said. “It’s not all that long of time, but it’s enough to know the man in that video is not the man that I’m trying to be.”