Post Malone now looks to country music and risks falling off his horse

Post Malone now looks to country music and risks falling off his horse

Defining him as “chameleonic” is now an understatement. Post Malone's new single “I had some help” features Morgan Wallen, one of the most popular country pop singer-songwriters of all time. The song was written by Malone and Wallen themselves together with Louis Bell, Ryan Vojtesak, Ashley Gorley, Ernest Keith Smith and Hoskins and produced by Louis Bell, Charlie Handsome and Hoskins as co-producers. The single, which will be featured on Post Malone's first country album due out this year, comes on the heels of Malone and Wallen's sets at the 2024 Stagecoach Festival of Indio, California. Last April, Posty performed a set of country covers at Stagecoach for the first time, and during the performance he welcomed superstars Brad Paisley, Sara Evans and Dwight Yoakam as guests. predicting its new horizon.

Recently collaborated with Taylor Swift for “Fortnight”, the first single from “The tortured poets department”, the new album by the international pop star. A curiosity: “Fortnight” became the song that had the most streams in a single day in the history of Spotify. One question remains: who is Post Malone today? Rap and trap, which were part of his career, already with the 2023 album “Austin”, have been surpassed and completely abandoned on a sound level. The artist has matured, changed, grown. But beware of thinking that in that case there was a pandering repositioning: Post Malone has always cultivated, since their first album “Stoney” in 2016, an instrumental approach. Above all the guitar is a symbolic element of his journeybrought to the stage and played by Posty himself since its inception as an instrument representing his most intimate and acoustic side. The beautiful “Stay” of 2018 reminds us of thisbut also the most rock experiment of “Take what you want” from 2019 with Ozzy Osbourne should not be underestimated. Precisely the rock veins have been another element that has always distinguished the music and the dark imagery of the artist, a legacy that he carries with him from his great love for Nirvana and that for his mentor and friend, Lil Peep.

In summary: “Austin”, however particular, can still fit into Malone's universe, has its own coherence and vision, is the guitar album and “played” which Posty always wanted to do (and which he presented on tour with a band). Now, however, this umpteenth turn towards a very pop and American country, just watch the video “I had some help”, in the even tackiest sense of the term, does not seem, in these first glimpses, entirely in focus. It will not be the first nor the last: Jelly Roll also moved from rap to “contaminated” country, the genre that more than any other, today more than ever, is in the industry spotlight. Malone's identity has always been multiple, but if you change direction you risk an accident and falling off your horse, especially if the approach to writing also seems to have changed: “It takes two people to break a heart in two. Baby, you blame me and I blame you, damn if it ain't the truth.” this is the banal refrain of the latest single with Wallen. There is no trace of the personal analysis, sometimes even painful, always carried out by the former rapper. We will see which path he will take, but the conditions leave many legitimate questions and concerns about who Post Malone is becoming today.