Smoke machines turn concerts into experiences. They also turn stages into obstacle courses, something Morgan Wallen found out on Thursday (Apr. 20). During the Apr. 29 stop on his One Night at a Time World Tour, Morgan, 29, performed “Heartless” to the crowd gathered at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Kentucky. In a video obtained by TMZ, Morgan walked on the fog-covered stage and seemed in his element before something tripped him up. From there, it looked like Morgan would recover, but instead, he took a tumble – and vanished in all the fog!
The band continued to play, and Morgan was able to get back to his feet with no major visible injury. TMZ adds how Morgan “didn’t miss a note.” The publication also reports that there were some technical issues with the lighting along the bottom of the stage during the performance, which might have contributed to Morgan’s fall.
Morgan is enjoying some new career heights. His One Thing At A Time album has sat atop the Billboard 200, and its lead single, “Last Night,” has spent three non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. His new single, “Thinkin’ Bout Me,” debuted at No. 21. One Thing had the largest streaming debut of any album so far in 2023, according to Spotify (per The Guardian), a stunning accomplishment for a singer who first gained fame when he appeared on The Voice in 2014.
That rise was threatened in 2021 when a video showed Morgan drunkenly shouting the N-word at friends. His label put him on indefinite hiatus, CMT pulled him from their platforms, and he was disqualified from the 2021 Grammys and 2021 Academy of Country Music Awards. He issued an apology video, pledged $500k to Black-led groups (the money was “largely M.I.A., reported Rolling Stone in 2021), and he retreated from the spotlight for a bit.
However, Morgan didn’t seem to suffer much at the bank. The New York Times noted he had the biggest album of 2021. In May 2022, when hosting and acting as the executive producer of the 2022 Billboard Music Awards, Diddy had Morgan perform at the show. “As a musical family, none of us are saints; none of us are without things that happen to them in life,” he said in an interview with Billboard. “So one of the things I’m doing directly is uncanceling the canceled. That’s breaking news because people haven’t been about uncanceling. But canceling is a trend that needs to stop.”