How Did Morgan Wallen’s ‘Love Somebody’ Become His First Single as a Lead Artist to Debut at No. 1?
Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” was on the verge of scoring a landmark 16th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, tying the longest run atop the chart this decade. But for this week (on the chart dated Nov. 2), he’s kept at bay by the fellow country artist whose mark he would’ve been tying: Morgan Wallen.
Wallen, whose “Last Night” reigned for 16 weeks over the course of 2023, enters the Hot 100 at its apex this week with his new song “Love Somebody.” The heavily TikTok-teased and live-promoted new single becomes the country superstar’s first song as a lead artist to debut atop the listing, and his second overall — following his featured turn on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” earlier this year, ultimately a six week No. 1.
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Why did this song turn out to be an instantaneous chart-topper? And does it set the stage for Morgan Wallen to get even bigger on his fourth album? Billboard staffers discuss these questions and more below.
1. Though Morgan Wallen has been knocking off chart accomplishments left and right for most of the decade now, “Love Somebody” is his first single as a lead artist to debut at No. 1. What do you think the biggest reason is for the song’s massive debut?
Katie Atkinson: I would credit Morgan’s epic summer, which, yes, included his Hot 100 No. 1 duet with Post Malone, but also his One Night at a Time stadium-tour victory lap, where he played 10 60,000-capacity venues from April to August and kept his music top of mind all season. Now he’s playing across Europe, where he premiered “Love Somebody” onstage, and collecting an even wider audience. The release of this crowd-pleaser of a song is a cherry on top of a huge few years for him.
Kyle Denis: I think it’s probably a combination of things. Wallen perfected the art of the tease with “7 Summers” a few years bag, and he’s only tightened up his game since. He first teased “Love Somebody” on May 16 via TikTok, and he’s been performing the song in full as early as August 29. People have already decided that they enjoy and want to support the song – they just needed an official release. Of course, it also helps that Wallen’s hype train hasn’t lost any steam; he’s been parked in the upper reaches of the Hot 100 for most of the year thanks to his appearance on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” and he’s been packing stadiums with the last few shows of his One Night at a Time tour.
Elias Leight: Wallen had the wind in his sails coming into this week: His single “Last Night” spent roughly a third of 2023 at No. 1, and “I Had Some Help,” his collaboration with Post Malone, topped the chart in the early summer this year. “Love Somebody” outperformed Wallen’s previous solo single, “Lies Lies Lies,” across the board, pulling in 4.1 million more streams (31.1 million, compared to 27 million for “Lies Lies Lies”) and 3,000 more sales (17,000 for “Love Somebody” vs. 14,000 for “Lies Lies Lies.”). That all helped, but the biggest difference in support came from radio: While “Lies Lies Lies” earned 4.5 million in airplay audience opening week, “Love Somebody” more than tripled that total, reaching 15.2 million.
Jason Lipshutz: “Love Somebody” may be Wallen’s first solo single to debut at No. 1, but “Last Night” spent a whopping 16 weeks there last year, and “I Had Some Help” with Post Malone started in the top spot earlier this year. Plus, Wallen has had six top 20 hits on the Hot 100 as a lead artist in the roughly year-and-a-half since “Last Night” became his first chart-topper. He’s been a superstar for multiple years at this point, and while I expect “Love Somebody” to become one of his bigger hits, its No. 1 debut isn’t shocking considering Wallen’s stature upon its release.
Andrew Unterberger: Morgan Wallen hardly needs some help these days when it comes to launching a hit lead single, but it probably shows how much belief he has in “Love Somebody” to be a huge, maybe even defining hit that he hedged his bets by teasing it so extensively ahead of time, both on TikTok and at live shows, and by apparently going hard with the radio promotion, as evidenced by the song’s first-week numbers there. It’s the most concentrated push I can remember a Wallen single getting, and it’s not surprising it’s resulted in a No. 1 debut.
2. “Love Somebody” isn’t Wallen’s first No. 1 this year, as he was already featured on Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help,” a six-week No. 1 in its own right — and it’s not his first top 10 hit on his own, as his “Lies Lies Lies” debuted at No. 7 in July. Which of the two songs do you think “Love Somebody” more builds upon musically or thematically, if either?
Katie Atkinson: Definitely “Lies Lies Lies.” We often only get one side of the country-star life in song, whether the subject matter is the beer-soaked tailgate parties or the girls in impossibly tight jeans. But “Lies Lies Lies” and “Love Somebody” are both about the other side of that coin: namely, being surrounded by countless friends and lovers but feeling more alone than ever.
Kyle Denis: Of the two, “Love Somebody” feels more in line with “Lies Lies Lies” with its focus on the push-and-pull of love and heartbreak and its soft rock-inflected country sound. While it’s still a banger, “I Had Some Help” really leans into country-pop and feels more like a break-up party track than a moment of serious introspection. It also feels much more like a Post Malone song than both “Lies” and “Love.”
Elias Leight: “Lies Lies Lies” is bleary-eyed and desperate, overwhelmingly distraught in the manner of older Wallen ballads like “Your Bartender.” The lyrical motif also evokes Zach Top’s “I Never Lie,” another strong country record from earlier this year; both songs paint cheerful pictures of a put-together post-breakup life, only to reveal it’s all made up. “No thoughts of your body runnin’ through my head,” Wallen sings. “No bottle of bourbon beside the bed.” A few short lines later, the truth comes out: “I’m still a fool for you/Nothin’ I wouldn’t do for you.”
While both “I Had Some Help” and “Love Somebody” also live in the shadow of romantic wreckage, they are breezy and up-tempo, the type of thing that goes down smooth on pop radio. (“Love Somebody” was co-written by Jacob Kasher Hindlin, who also has credits on Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and Charlie Puth’s “Attention.”) Wallen said “Love Somebody” was “inspired by Latin-leaning influences,” but the result sounds more like vintage yacht rock, complete with a flashy needlepoint guitar solo.
Jason Lipshutz: “Love Somebody” doesn’t utilize the same sonic palette as “I Had Some Help,” but both singles represent oversized, mainstream-aimed smashes, with undeniable refrains and an understanding of Wallen’s strengths as a vocalist. “Lies Lies Lies” showcases his charm with a mournful tone and has hung around the top 20 of the Hot 100 for months, but isn’t as ready-made as a ubiquitous crossover hit; there’s a reason why it started at No. 7 on the Hot 100, at “Love Somebody” launched in the top spot.
Andrew Unterberger: Increasingly, I view Morgan Wallen songs as falling into one of two buckets: Those with a little tempo and those without. As a decided “with,” I feel “Love Somebody” is far more in league with “I Had Some Help” — and most of my other Wallen songs of choice.
3. Hard not to notice that “Love Somebody” interrupts the reign of Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” one week before the latter was set to tie Wallen’s “Last Night” mark of 16 weeks atop the chart for the longest reign of the decade. Do you think the reign will be an extended one, or do you see “A Bar Song” threatening to take back over the top spot for its 16th frame as soon as next week?
Katie Atkinson: I have a feeling Morgan is going to hang on awhile with this one. The poppy production and lyrical cadence make this one ripe for a beyond-country crossover moment, and it hasn’t left my head all week. Also, its melodic similarities to Dua Lipa’s “Training Season” (the songs share a handful of songwriters) means it already feels familiar just a week in.
Kyle Denis: Yes. Given Shaboozey’s massive cross-genre support on radio and the steady streaming success of “A Bar Song,” I expect the VA cowboy to return to the top spot sooner rather than later.
Elias Leight: Since Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has been at the top of the chart for so long, it’s starting to lose altitude at streaming — an inevitable result after flying so high for so long. And although the single is still moving up at Hot AC radio, it’s declining at Pop, and he is now promoting a different track to country radio stations. Since Wallen’s song is new, he can move quickly to consolidate support at the Pop and Hot AC radio formats, expanding his reach, while climbing further in his core format of country. That said, Shaboozey and his label have had a long time to prepare defensive maneuvers to stave off a potential challenger.
Jason Lipshutz: While I would never want to count out the enormity of “A Bar Song” after the last few months we’ve experienced, it does feel like the time has come for the top of the Hot 100 to turn over to some degree, with “Love Somebody” leading the charge as an autumn-released smash. I’m not sure how long “Love Somebody” spends in the top spot since it’s still early days and it’s a slightly different, Latin-influenced sound for Wallen, but the timing of its No. 1 debut suggests that Shaboozey’s huge hit may finally be sliding a bit, and I’d bet against it logging more than maybe one more week at the top of the Hot 100.
Andrew Unterberger: I think “Love Somebody” might need a couple weeks to amass the total radio support he needs to hold on to a No. 1 spot once his first-week sales and streams recede — but in the meantime, looks like Shaboozey has extra competition for No. 1 from a newly motivated Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars and a blockbusting Tyler, the Creator. (He’s particularly lucky that the latter kneecapped the first-week numbers for his Chromakopia album by releasing it on a mid-tracking-week Monday, otherwise — given the first-day numbers that set is putting up — he might have had to fend off multiple tracks from that thing next week.) So we’ll see if Shaboozey gets to Week 16 next week or one of the few after, but I doubt Morgan Wallen will be his biggest obstacle regardless.
4. Despite some serious controversies and major backlash, Wallen has seemingly only gotten bigger in his career over his three albums to date. Based on his 2024 output, do you see him getting even bigger with album No. 4 when that comes, or is he bound to plateau by then?
Katie Atkinson: I think we’re still rising and that plateau is nowhere in sight. A lot of people credited Morgan with boosting Post Malone’s bona fides for his debut country single, but I think that mutually beneficial relationship will work in the other direction too. Anyone who doesn’t follow country music and maybe only knew Morgan’s name from when he said the N-word on camera likely at least gave “I Had Some Help” a spin over the summer. There’s room for Morgan to grow and it looks like he’s still growing.
Kyle Denis: I think he probably has one more monster album in him on the level of Dangerous or One Thing at a Time before he starts to plateau. He can ride the mainstream country boom a little while longer and take advantage of the genre being at the center of the zeitgeist right now. I think his real challenge is album No. 5, will a gargantuan 20+ track album work the same magic a fourth time in a row? I’m not sure I’d put my money on it just yet.
Elias Leight: He will continue to get bigger. There are still more listeners for him to reach outside of the country genre, both with pop-leaning records like “Love Somebody” and through his hip-hop collaborations — his song with Moneybagg Yo is being played at my gym, which otherwise ignores country music completely. There’s also more room for Wallen to grow outside of the U.S. as country’s global footprint continues to expand. According to his label Big Loud, Wallen just earned the first ever No. 1 debut on the U.K. Country Airplay Chart.
Jason Lipshutz: He’s going to get bigger — potentially a lot bigger. One Thing at a Time was Wallen’s first album since the controversy, and while it was a juggernaut, there’s no doubt that some number of listeners dismissed the project due to his negative actions. Now, with multiple years between him and those actions, Wallen is ready to pull in new listeners who were part of that outcry against him, while also super-serving the fan base that helped him join country music’s elite. We have a situation in which a superstar has been set up to become a decade-defining artist — as long as he sticks the landing with the music, and avoids anything untoward outside of it.
Andrew Unterberger: Crazy to think of what Morgan Wallen getting even bigger could look like at this point — ’90s Garth Brooks mixed with late-’00s Taylor Swift? — but it does seem like we’ll find out soon; his 2024 has only kept his arrow trending farther and farther upwards. Stadiums, seven-figure first-weeks, Grammys: Who knows for sure, but it all seems in play at this point.
5. Let’s say Wallen was properly motivated to maintain his 2020s mark and continue to keep “A Bar Song” out of No. 1. What new remix or video or other promotional tactic would you recommend him trying out to ensure “Love Somebody” was virtually unmoveable from the top spot?
Katie Atkinson: A remix of “Love Somebody” with a female artist that adds a second verse from a woman’s perspective — give it to me right now. Maybe to keep it personal (since they were once “not just friends”), we can enlist Megan Moroney for the new duet.
Kyle Denis: Drop the official music video with Brianna ‘Chickenfry’ LaPaglia as your leading lady.
Elias Leight: There haven’t been a lot of star-studded remixes helping artists win close chart races this year, though a well-timed music video release from Kendrick Lamar did help “Not Like Us” rebound to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July. The key to a long run at the top of the chart these days seems to be maintaining interest from a streaming audience while also cultivating support from at least three radio formats.
Jason Lipshutz: Simple enough: perform on The Voice, with surprise guest Adam Levine in his triumphant return to the show, and create a mash-up with Maroon 5’s “Love Somebody” and his own. Will that sound good? Probably not. Will viewers love the synergy? You bet.
Andrew Unterberger: Post Malone returning the “Help” favor by adding some aid of his own here seems like a no-brainer.
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