Even more remarkable has been that 2021 album’s longevity. Wallen’s previous LP, the quadruple-platinum Dangerous: The Double Album, spent 10 weeks atop the Billboard 200 in 2021 and was the No. 1 album of that year-among all albums, of any genre. On the album chart, Wallen has the footprint of a Harry Styles or Drake- One Thing at a Time opened this week to a half-million in sales and streams, about as big as the first week of Harry’s House and bigger than Drake’s recent Her Loss. His dominance on the country charts has been near-total since the end of the ’10s: In five years, he’s racked up 10 No. 1s on Billboard’s Hot Country or Country Airplay charts, from 2018’s “ Whiskey Glasses” through 2022’s “ You Proof.” But his sales and streams are massive for any genre. If you aren’t a country listener and only know Wallen’s name from the cultural controversies that have attached to him in the past two-plus years (more on that in a moment), you might not appreciate just how big he is. If you aren’t a country listener and only know Wallen’s name from his controversies, you might not appreciate just how big he is. It’s much bigger on country radio right now, but it’s not inconceivable that it could grow with pop listeners, too. ![]() ![]() Which, by the way, it is-Billboard ranks it 32 nd this week at pure pop stations, currently earning spins everywhere from Chattanooga to Seattle to Minneapolis. By the time the chorus comes back a second time, a trap thump has popped up, ensuring this song could plausibly get played on Top 40 radio alongside Miley Cyrus, Sam Smith, and the Weeknd. The titular phrase is about hungover memories of the previous evening, but it’s also a rumination on relationship finality: “Baby, something’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet-no way it was our last night.” By the time Wallen gets to the first verse after the opening chorus, he’s singing in a double-time cadence that would be called “rap” if Post Malone did it. ![]() Opening with a ’90s-style downtuned guitar arpeggio that could’ve been on a Soundgarden or Gin Blossoms record a generation ago and cycles through the song like a digital loop, the song wastes no time getting to Wallen’s sung refrain: “Last night, we let the liquor talk-I can’t remember everything we said, but we said it all.” A lot of Wallen songs have a bit of enjambment or double meaning to them (“ Wasted on You,” “ Don’t Think Jesus”), and “Last Night” has a bit of that, too. These four men’s output is just the sort of covering-all-bases hybrid you might expect. Among “Last Night’s” four songwriters, two hail primarily from the world of country ( John Byron and Ashley Gorley) and two from pop and hip-hop ( Jacob Kasher Hindlin and Ryan “ Charlie Handsome” Vojtesak).
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