“It’s Bigger Than Country Music”: Morgan Wallen’s ‘Jack and Jill’ Writer Jacob Hackworth on Wallen’s Impact

One of the songwriters behind Morgan Wallen's ‘Jack and Jill’, Jacob Hackworth, has shared how special it was learning that Wallen had decided to record his track.

During an appearance on Matt Burrill's Outside the Round podcast, Hackworth pays tribute to Wallen's game-changing impact on the country music landscape, beginning, “Yeah, dude, I mean just where he's at and the size of what he's doing...”

Burrill chimes in by stressing how unprecedented Wallen's run is, with the ‘Last Night’ chart-topper's influence extending fay beyond the usual Nashville boundaries, “It's cultural, it's bigger than country music. It's like 100,000 people a night, up to that”.

Hackworth underlines how, given Wallen's immense superstardom, it felt surreal to get a song on his 2025 album, I'm the Problem, “When he cut ‘Jack and Jill’, that was like, that was like a ‘Holy S***’ moment. Like you said, he's...in my book, definitely one of the greats, and you know, to be a part of something like that is pretty special”.

‘Jack and Jill’ is one of the most underrated gems on I'm the Problem, with the intimate ode following the tragic story of two lovers who get sucked into a fatal spiral of pills and alcohol.

It's a dark, inventive twist on the classic nursery rhyme (“How their whole world came tumbling down / Heartbreak kills, Jill got on the pills / And Jack couldn't get off that Crown”).

Hackworth co-wrote the song with Jared Mullins and Ned Cameron, with ‘Jack and Jill’ blossoming into a moving deep-cut that many fans champion as one of the best storytelling odes on I'm the Problem, despite it not being one of the biggest streamers.

Much like ‘Number 3 and Number 7’ and ‘I'm a Little Crazy’, ‘Jack and Jill’ epitomised Wallen's commitment on I'm the Problem to showcasing his versatility, and his keenness to retain an emphasis on country storytelling while embracing other genres.