Before Morgan Wallen was a country music superstar, he was just like every other artist trying to make it into the industry.
Part of his journey was a stop by NBC’s singing competition The Voice during the show’s sixth season in 2014. Before his patented mullet (which he no longer sports after shaving his head over the summer), 20-year-old Wallen was rocking a haircut that some might characterize as “The Keith Urban.”
It wasn’t a bad look for the unknown singer at the time, though the mullet certainly fit better with his country singing ability later on down the road. As he was introduced into the show, Wallen told viewers of The Voice a little bit about his backstory:
“My name is Morgan Wallen, I’m 20-years-old, I’m from Knoxville, Tennessee, and I’m currently a landscaper.
I started singing when I was about 3-years-old. My mom threw me up on stage at church and around 8-years-old, I was entered into a competition and I came in third.
They offered me a record contract, but my mom was like ‘I want you to have a normal childhood,’ so we turned it down.”
Clearly Morgan Wallen was destined to be a star at some point, even having that star power and “record contract talent” at a very young age. But, like he said, the timing wasn’t right when he was younger, at least by what his mother thought. Once he got to The Voice though, he was ready to turn some heads (and some chairs).
In the commentary he provided that played shortly before he took center stage to sing Howie Day’s hit song “Collide,” Wallen shared how much it meant for his family to be there with him:
“I started singing in church a little bit, and I was like ‘man I think this is something I could get into. My mom and my grandmother, they’ve always been my biggest supporters in whatever I do.
So it means the world to me to have them here.”
I guess that means that his mother and grandmother were giving their full support when he was a landscaper, though they were surely proud of their son/grandson when he decided to take the jump and try out for the singing competition.
Check out Wallen’s powerful rendition of “Collide” below:
If you were wondering, Wallen joined on with “Team Usher” immediately after his blind audition, eventually switching over to Adam Levine’s team later on in the season.
He made it all the way to the playoffs of the sixth season, but was ultimately eliminated. That didn’t work out all that bad for Morgan, considering that he signed a record deal right after his appearance on The Voice, and released his first EP (Stand Alone) a year later.
If you ask me, I’d say he got snubbed from winning the whole thing, just like he got snubbed from this year’s Grammy nominations…
