When Morgan Wallen named his wildly anticipated new record I’m The Problem, was it open defiance? Irony? An in-on-the-joke-not-everyone-finds-funny punchline? Or was it an actual acknowledgement of the internal struggles and circumstances that vex conventional good ole boys from the Smoky Mountains?

Cynics are going to have a field day with the title. In a gotcha culture where Wallen's misbehaviors are clickbait gold, it’s easy to blame, shame and game a 32-year supernova who hardly measures up to the miscreant adventures many of the rock stars who came before him enjoyed. In an us/them world, a good ole boy raised to say “ma’am” and quote Scripture is in many ways a culture divide too far for the New York- and L.A.-based mediocracy. That gap serves as a creative undertow for Wallen’s follow-up to 2023’s bazillion-streaming One Thing at a Time.

“Ain’t Coming Back” offers an unapologetic if good-feeling assessment of same. Owning who he is—“Girl, half of this town has got a name for me, and I can’t say I disagree,” he sings—Wallen merges Johnny Walker Black with Jesus, Richard Petty and a ’97 Chevy to get gone.

With “Come Back as a Redneck” f/HARDY, the Sneedville, Tennessee-born-and-raised Wallen drops a simply stated defense of his culture in the face of a judgmental eye roll from a white-collar baller who pulls up next to him. Beyond the reality check of “I hope you break your back for that barely get by paycheck” and the skewering final salvo “We ain’t as different as you think we is, but I didn’t pull up sayin’ ‘Won’t you look at that born rich, fed with a silver spoon, trust fund kid’ like you did,” it’s the same rugged reality check that fueled Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive” in 1981.

“Working Man’s Song,” muscular and smoky, leans into the shortfall of blue-collar work and blue-collar wages with no way out. Evoking Merle Haggard’s ethos of post-Dust Bowl struggle, it’s a sobering picture that’s closer to reality than many realize. Employing a Lynyrd Skynyrd electric guitar vamp, frustration merges with resolve.

“Jack and Jill,” a classic small-town tale of how young dreams intersect and destroy the dreamers, is one of the few places where Wallen takes the focus off his own struggles. But the larger trope speaks to too many kids trapped in a lack of opportunity, cheap drugs, alcoholism and the quicksand of a life that’s hard to escape. Cautionary, it’s observational in a way fellow country super-impactor Jelly Roll also demonstrates.

For those who don’t know the holy trinity of “Skoal, Chevy, and Browning,” Browning makes firearms; but as Wallen sings, he’s protecting him for a world gone mad. A theme of Southerners whose fear is partially fueled by an unseen meth-churning underclass that creates a different kind of economy, poverty and lawlessness.

In all, though, Problem’s a 37-song cycle of self-reckoning. Wallen realizes he’s where the struggle begins and ends. “Kick Myself” acknowledges there’s always a slip-up imminent, because how he is is who he is. Whether the wild-eyed teen wrecking a car of “Number 3 and Number 7” f/Eric Church or the barstool coping “Drinking Til It Does,” he doesn’t sugarcoat or make excuses.

But he’s also recognizing a weakness for a certain type girl. “Crazy Eyes,” with its drug references and uncontrolled desire; “If You Were Mine,” that draws on Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes” and Brooks & Dunn‘s “Neon Moon”; and “Miami,” which techno-treats Keith Whitley’s iconic “Miami, My Amy,” are all bad ideas he recognizes going in. Even “What I Want” f/Tate McRae and “20 Cigarettes” are no-strings hook-ups that work without lasting.

Wallen is a preacher’s grandkid, whose values remain to find someone worth keeping. The melancholy “Smile” suggests even bittersweet is better, while “Leavin’s the Least I Could Do” recognizes you can’t get there from co-dependence.

“I Got Better,” with its high-hat rim click, moves from blame to recognition that some combinations are toxic, as the lyric completes “since you got gone.” Healing comes with letting go; self-knowledge isn’t a switch, so moving past what you were conditioned to believe will include backsliding, but there’s a freedom in emerging from bad relationship dynamics.

Sonically, it feels good. With all the things people love about Morgan Wallen’s records, there’s much to enjoy. It’s not broke, why fix it? Instead, he’s taking the people listening a little deeper into their own ruminative corners, while they can still drink, dance and sit on a truck bed making out to it.