Sold-Out Stadiums, Broken Records & World Domination: How Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan are Propelling Country Music to New Heights

With Zach Bryan unveiling the first ever concert at Michigan Stadium, the largest stadium in the US and the third-biggest on the planet, it's easy to overlook just how significant this feat is. It's the latest in a string of football stadiums and sprawling 100,000-capacity venues Bryan has lined up - and sold-out - in 2025.

Meanwhile, last month, Morgan Wallen - the only country artist currently posting bigger numbers than Zach Bryan - unveiled an expansive 2025 tour, featuring an array of colossal dates at stadiums across the US. On his I'm the Problem run, Wallen will become the first artist in history to play two shows at Wisconsin's Camp Randall, which can host around 75,000 attendees a time. It follows the ‘Last Night’ hitmaker's momentous home-town double-header at Neyland Stadium in September, during which Morgan Wallen shattered the venue's attendance record.

Shortly after his Neyland Stadium shows, the tour those dates were a part of - Wallen's One Night At A Time run - was confirmed to be the highest-grossing country tour of all time.

We've grown accustomed to seeing headlines about the various records and milestones both Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan have been obliterating in the past couple of years, and it's easy to become blasé about the level of stardom this duo have achieved.

Unlike many of the leading country acts of the post-2000’s, their reach is not merely confined to US and Canadian shores - both Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan have truly gone global.

Wallen headlined London's multi-genre BST Hyde Park last year, an event that has welcomed some of the biggest artists on the planet, ranging from Bruce Springsteen to the Eagles to The Rolling Stones, while Bryan plays two headlining shows there in June.

Shortly before his BST Hyde Park shows, Bryan headlines a staggering three dates at Dublin's Phoenix Park, with many predicting he'll break Robbie Williams’ attendance record.

These mammoth achievements are not confined to Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan's live shows, either, with both artists boasting streaming figures that match those of today's biggest pop acts. Out of the two, Wallen has enjoyed more success in this respect, with each new release a shoo-in for a Top 10 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

In Billboard's Top Artists of the 21st Century ranking, which was published in early January, Morgan Wallen landed at No. 13, while his 2021 opus, Dangerous: The Double Album, was crowned Billboard's Top Album of the 21st Century - period.

At the time of writing, Dangerous has spent an eye-watering 213 weeks on the Billboard 200, with 158 of those spent inside the Top Ten, a tally bested by only one other album in Billboard 200 chart history - the beloved original cast recording of My Fair Lady, which secured 173 weeks at the business-end of the chart during 1956-60.

Those within the country world are well aware that Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan are the two leading lights of the genre, with each new drop sending a shockwave across Music City.

But even so, it often feels like we've become so used to Wallen and Bryan breaking record after record, that we haven't fully taken stock of how momentous this period of time is for country music. The genre is more prominent than ever, and of course, this is partly courtesy of the TikTok-fuelled popularity of prodigies such as Shaboozey and Dasha, as well as the elevated visibility offered by crossovers such as Post Malone's F-1Trillion and Beyoncé's COWBOY CARTER - but these spikes in listenership are also thanks to Wallen and Bryan's long-term success.

As for why these are the two artists that have broken away from the pack in recent years, the answer is a little more muddied. Their sounds are so opposed that it's sometimes jarring to think of them as being in the same category at awards ceremonies, with Morgan Wallen lacing his hits with trap-infused 808s and a snarling drawl, while Zach Bryan leans towards a sparser, folkier and DIY-inspired aesthetic.

As a result, though, they zero in on two of the biggest factions within country - Bryan is celebrated as a disrupter by those who ridicule the heavy production and ‘polished’ feel of Nashvillian, Radio-friendly country. Wallen, on the other hand, occupies the unique position of being the global face of today's genre-blending Music City sound, while gaining an added sheen of intrigue through his ‘bad boy’ persona, with the powers-that-be in Nashville often refusing to acknowledge his role as the genre's figurehead. His unexpected 2024 CMA Entertainer of the Year victory, however, is perhaps a sign that this approach is about to change.

Through their respective embrace of other genres, with Zach Bryan drawing on folk and indie textures and Morgan Wallen plucking elements from Hip Hop and Rock, they appeal to mainstream, non-country listeners to a degree that the more inward-facing, trope-centric style of the 2010's Bro-Country wave never quite could.

Both carry a sense of unpredictability, too, which - whether we like to admit it or not - is enticing. Zach Bryan loves to double-down on his anti-establishment rhetoric and stream-of-consciousness tirades on X, while - off-stage antics aside - Morgan Wallen has adopted a thrilling, loose-cannon approach to sharing unreleased teasers.

Each artist is poised for a blockbuster year, with Morgan Wallen readying his fourth studio album, I'm the Problem, and Zach Bryan gearing up to release his final major label project, Motorbreath, while both are performing a flurry of uber-high-profile shows.

With the stratospheric heights Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan have reached in throughout past few years, who knows what new frontiers they can conquer this year.

Either way, it's time to put aside our personal allegiances, and the inevitable sense of rivalry that arises as a result of being at the pinnacle of their field - one that is exacerbated by their respective fanbases. At the end of the day, one of the greatest privileges of being a country music fan in 2025 is knowing, thanks to these two artists, we're getting to witness history on a weekly basis. Long may it continue.

For more on Morgan Wallen, see below: