During a new conversation with Aimee Mayo for her Earth to Aimee podcast, Craig Wiseman has opened up about what he feels makes Morgan Wallen a singular, inimitable artist.

Wiseman, of course, co-founded Wallen's label, Big Loud Records, and has co-written a host of Wallen's most beloved tracks, particularly from his debut album If I Know Me, including ‘Chasin’ You’, ‘Not Good at Not’, ‘Happy Hour’ and ‘Talkin’ Tennessee’.

Although he doesn't tend to write with Wallen quite as often these days, Wiseman was a key figure in the Sneedville native's emergence and has served as a mentor for Wallen.

While chatting to Mayo, Wiseman expresses his frustration at how many copy-cats he sees across social media, who are clearly attempting to mimic Wallen's signature sound and style.

Wiseman outlines, “Right now, oh my God, I can't turn on TikTok without like 57 guys that sound like Morgan. Guess what? We've already got a Morgan. And you know what? Morgan Wallen is always gonna be better at being Morgan Wallen than you are”.

He goes on to stress how important it is for up-and-coming songwriters to find their own lane and stay true to the music they want to make, “The only thing you have as a writer is your uniqueness, and it's so easy to try to [imitate]. And I get it because there's all these amazing things going on. You want to imitate these great things going on, because basically you're going to kill yourself to learn how to put yourself in the middle of the herd to write this indistinguishable s***”.

He adds, “Basically, this is it. There are 80% replicators and 20% creators, and you could train yourself to be a replicator, or you can train yourself to be a creator. Create. Why would you ever want to replicate? Why do you want to just go to the parts bin and take the factory parts and just reassemble another frigging song about a Silverado and a Saturday night and sipping on a whatever the f*** that is”.

He uses this to highlight how clever Wallen is in his storytelling, “That's how Morgan is so smart too. So many people want to write from, ‘Oh we were in the truck and we're going and the moon was coming in like this...’ Morgan was like, ‘I'm looking at your eyes, and you're right here. And our circumstances, or whether we're in a truck, or whether we're in Sneedville, Tennessee, or Dallas, Texas, or Los Angeles, or Paris, frigging France - don't matter. It's just all right here between me and you’. He's got that focus. It works. He's got that focus clamped down to this”.

Wiseman celebrates Wallen's idiosyncrasy, “I think by doing that, it so naturally separates him from so much of this bulls***...He's not talking about all this kind of stuff....He writes from a small town perspective, but he's not writing about the small town”.

It's true that there is a universally relatable and accessible spirit that underpins Wallen's music, despite all the inherently ‘country’ imagery and scenery. ‘More Than My Hometown’, for instance, is on the surface about a country boy that doesn't want to leave his hometown for a girl, but if you dig deeper - as Wallen himself has recently alluded to - you find that it's actually about so much more. It's about not compromising your values for someone, about holding onto a romanticised ideal of your hometown, about deciding what matters most to you when faced with a crossroads - and those are things that resonate far beyond the Tennessee border.

Later in the interview, Wiseman encourages fans to go and listen to ’Dark Til Daylight’, from Wallen's latest album, I'm the Problem. It finds the ‘Last Night’ chart-topper exploring a gritty, alternative sound that we hadn't really heard from him before this.

Wiseman gushes, “Morgan doing that song. You want to hear, like, staggering?That, my friends, is a creator. That is not a replicator. Everything about that, the feel of it, whatever it is, whatever genre you want to call that, I don't even know what it is. It's not country. It's not pop. I don't even know. It's it's own thing - and it's brilliant”.

Wiseman concludes with a playful note of advice for anyone wanting to pitch songs to the country titan, “Morgan knows Morgan...Don't even waste his time with some bulls***”.

What's crazy about Wiseman's assessment is that Wallen still gets flak for not writing more of his material, despite being a credited co-writer on the majority of his material. On I'm the Problem, for example, Wallen penned 22 of the 37 songs that made the cut.

He's undoubtedly cemented himself as not only one of the biggest artists in country music, but also one of the most innovative and open-minded, with Wallen willing to push the boundaries of what constitutes country and what constitutes pop, hip-hop, etc. We see this clearly on his infectious new single, ‘Been By Now’, which Wallen has hinted is a sign of what's to come. As Wiseman so eloquently puts it, there's nobody else like Wallen, and whatever he has up his sleeve for his next chapter, one thing's for sure - it'll be the sound he wants to produce, not a style or a blueprint from someone else that he's attempting to emulate.