The callout is on the title track from Williams’ latest solo album, “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party,” released in August.
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Hayley Williams; Morgan Wallen.Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty; Jason Kempin/Getty
Hayley Williams isn’t afraid to name names, especially when it comes to Morgan Wallen.
While discussing her new solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, on Wednesday’s episode of The New York Times’ Popcast podcast, Williams revealed that Wallen was the inspiration behind the title track’s “racist country singer” lyric.
Hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli questioned the Paramore frontwoman about the identity of the person referenced in the lyric, “I’ll be the biggest star / in this racist country singer’s bar.”
While Williams acknowledged that there “could be a couple” of people she’s talking about, she unabashedly continued, “I’m always talking about Morgan Wallen, I don’t give a s—.”
“Find me at Whole Foods, bitch, I don’t care,” she added.
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Hayley Williams.Nina Westervelt/WWD via Getty
Williams previously declared that Wallen’s bar, dubbed Morgan Wallen’s This Bar & Tennessee Kitchen, is her least favorite musician-owned Nashville establishment.
“When you open a business, you don’t just put your name on it. Like you come up with something, right?” she told Stereogum in August. “It can have your DNA in it, but I don’t understand the bars that are just people’s names.”
Representatives for Williams and Wallen did not immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment.
Wallen, who has seemingly made a name for himself more so by generating controversy than for his music, struck a particularly discordant note when he was caught on camera using a racist slur in 2021.
In the wake of the video’s release — which showed him using the N-word outside his Nashville home in January of that year — many country music artists and observers characterized Wallen’s behavior as the most recent symptom of an industry infected by racism long ago.
“When I read comments saying ‘this is not who we are,’ I laugh because this is exactly who country music is,” singer Mickey Guyton, the only female Black country artist signed to a major label, wrote on X at the time.
“You guys should just read some of the vile comments hurled at me on a daily basis.”
“It actually IS representative of our town because this isn’t his first ‘scuffle’ and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless,” Maren Morris added in her own post on X at the time. “We all know it wasn’t his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse.”
Wallen later apologized for the incident, saying, “I appreciate those who still see something in me and have defended me. But for today, please don’t. I was wrong. I fully accept any penalties I’m facing.”
The never-ending issue of racial division and inequality, especially when it comes to the South’s history of racial tensions, is exactly what inspired William’s latest solo album.
“I’m never not ready to scream at the top of my lungs about racial issues,” Williams told the New York Times of the 17 tracks on Ego Death that tackle racism, mental health, and more. “I don’t know why that became the thing that gets me the most angry. I think because it’s so intersectional that it overlaps with everything from climate change to LGBTQIA+ issues.”
The singer, who has long advocated for the LGBTQ+ community and spoken out about racism, self-released Ego Death on her new venture Post Atlantic, distributed via Secretly Distribution.
Watch Williams’ full chat with Popcast above.
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