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Morgan Wallen arrested for throwing a chair from a rooftop bar in Nashville

Country music star Morgan Wallen attending the CMA Awards in Nashville in Nov. 2023.
Jason Kempin
/
Getty Images
Country music star Morgan Wallen attending the CMA Awards in Nashville in Nov. 2023.

Country music star Morgan Wallen was arrested on three felony counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct early Monday in Nashville after he allegedly threw a chair from the rooftop of a bar Sunday night. According to the Metro Nashville Police Department, the chair landed on the street close to two police officers.

Wallen was at fellow country artist Eric Church's new six-story bar, restaurant and live music venue called Chief's, which opened on Friday.

In February 2021, Wallen made a public apology after TMZ posted a video showing him yelling a racial slur in Nashville. He was "suspended" by his record label, Big Loud, and his music was briefly dropped by radio conglomerates and the country music channel, CMT.

After that incident, however, Wallen's popularity surged, and he went on to have one of the biggest music hits of the year; his album Dangerous became the first country music album in history to spend its first seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Since then, he has continued to enjoy huge chart success; this past year, his song "Last Night" grabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 year-end chart, and his album One Thing at a Time took the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 year-end chart.

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Anastasia Tsioulcas is a reporter on NPR's Arts desk. She is intensely interested in the arts at the intersection of culture, politics, economics and identity, and primarily reports on music. Recently, she has extensively covered gender issues and #MeToo in the music industry, including backstage tumult and alleged secret deals in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against megastar singer Plácido Domingo; gender inequity issues at the Grammy Awards and the myriad accusations of sexual misconduct against singer R. Kelly.