Morgan Wallen’s journey to music stardom has been unlike so many others.

The country music star joined Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking this morning and told him that he “never dreamed” his music career would take off the way it did.

What started as a brief stint on reality television grew into a successful music career with multiple chart-topping singles and the only country album in the 64-year history of the Billboard 200 to spend its first ten weeks at the No.1 spot.

Wallen’s journey in the music industry began in 2014, when he competed on the 6th season of The Voice- before getting booted after the playoffs. Morgan Wallen told Hosking he didn’t see this as a loss in the end.

“I wanted to sing country, they wanted me to sing pop, I finally got to sing country, they kicked me off for singing country, which probably turned out to be the best thing that could happen to me. I didn’t know exactly who I was as an artist at that point anyway.”

One year later, a move to Nashville set him up with the connections he needed to break into the country music scene and figure out the kind of sound he wanted to produce.

“I moved here in 2015, we just started grinding and I ended up getting a record deal within a few months of moving here, a record promotion deal, and then I just started writing, I wrote songs for a year before I did anything else,” he told Newstalk ZB.

Fame has been a mixed experience for Morgan Wallen, as he knows he has the power to do a lot of good for the world and positively affect the lives of his fans. He enjoyed making fan’s lives by sending a video but admits to missing going to the grocery store like a normal person.

Cut to the present, where Morgan Wallen has released his third studio album One Thing At A Time. The album offers 33 tracks, but Morgan told Mike Hosking he was most proud of ‘98 Braves. Morgan Wallen has a personal connection to the baseball hook of the song, having played it in his youth.

“Growing up, I was always the best kid on the team. I never really had to try, which was a blessing and a curse cause I got to the point where I was maybe 15 or 16, and a lot of my buddies who I thought I was better than had been grinding and working their tails off constantly.”

Morgan Wallen managed to achieve great success in music following his baseball ambitions collapsing after an injury. He told Mike that “God works in crazy ways, but I’m trying to make the most of it”.

One Thing At A Time was influenced by Wallen’s previous album Dangerous: The Double Album. Fans told Morgan Wallen that they would listen to the 32-track album as they played golf or drove or worked out. Morgan Wallen was encouraged by this feedback and the successful run Dangerous had on the charts to create another long album.

“I got into the zone in the studio and just kept making songs. We actually cut 42 songs originally.”

One Thing At A Time covers plenty of familiar ground for Wallen; trucks, whiskey, beer, sports and women. “It’s honest to who we are, what we do and how we were raised” he explained to the Newstalk ZB breakfast host.

“We try to find unique perspectives on everyday things for people like us. That can be a challenge sometimes, Wallen explained, because he felt the need to write what he knew while offering a fresh perspective into familiar themes.

How does he expect those themes to translate to Kiwi audiences? This tour will be his first time visiting New Zealand and bringing that unique country sound to New Zealand is “surreal”, Morgan Wallen told Mike Hosking.

“It makes me happy to know I’m bringing a certain culture, a certain sound, a certain way of life to a different group of people who may have never heard it. There’s really not much of a better compliment that I can get.”

“I still consider myself a pretty simple dude, it doesn’t take a whole lot to make me happy- give me a few hundred acres and a couple buddies and I’m good. Not much has changed and I think that’s the way it’s always gonna be, and I hope my music always portrays that.”

One Thing At A Time is available to buy or stream now and Morgan Wallen’s One Night At A Time tour will be coming to Auckland’s Spark Arena on March 15th, 2023, tickets available here.