‘Last Night’ by Morgan Wallen - Lyrics & Meaning

Since dropping his sprawling, 36-song opus, One Thing At A Time, on March 3, Morgan Wallen has resumed his position as the king of the country charts - a role that, truth be told, he never really left vacant during the two-year spell between albums.

With 36 tracks to choose from, it was inevitably a difficult task to zero in on which one should be promoted to Country Radio first. But as soon as the Sneedville megastar dropped his three-song ‘Sampler’ EP in January ahead of the release of One Thing At A Time, which featured ‘Everything I Love’, ‘I Wrote The Book’ and ‘Last Night’, it was clear the latter was becoming a favourite among listeners.

In mid-May, ‘Last Night’ secured a sixth week atop the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, with many expecting it to continue this impressive run throughout the rest of the month - and possibly beyond. The single is the first song from Wallen to have reached the peak of the Hot 100, which is usually dominated by genres other than country.

Musically, ‘Last Night’ finds Morgan Wallen deploying his charismatic, gravelly drawl across a sleek fusion of an 808-driven beat and a sinuous, serpentine guitar riff.

It captures the experimental, genre-blending approach that Morgan Wallen laced into the sonic DNA of One Thing At A Time, with his much-loved twang ensuring ‘Last Night’ is inescapably grounded in country, while the trap-inspired backing opens up an audience that would not previously have been overly familiar with the genre.

It's a stylistic blueprint that Morgan Wallen also sticks to on other One Thing At A Time highlights such as ‘Thinkin’ Bout Me’, ‘Sunrise’, ‘You Proof’ and ‘Neon Star (Country Boy Lullaby)’.

The track was co-written by go-to Nashville songsmith, Ashley Gorley, whose pen has also spawned staple Wallen hits such as ‘Sand in My Boots’, ‘Warning’ and ‘You Proof’. ‘Last Night’ also credits Jacob Kasher Hindlin and Ryan Vojtesak as part of its team of songwriters, while the production was helmed by Joey Moi, who oversaw the entirety of One Thing At A Time, with help from Charlie Handsome.

Handsome is an interesting figure to have thrown into the mix, with the US producer generally being known for his work with hip hop artists such as Kanye West, Drake and Post Malone.

His involvement no doubt helped to guide the direction of ‘Last Night’ into trap and rap-inspired territory, with Handsome also having a hand in the production on other One Thing At A Time fan-favourites, ‘You Proof’, ‘Thinkin’ Bout Me’ and ‘Good Girl Gone Missin’’.

“Last night we let the liquor talk
I can’t remember everything we said but we said it all
You told me that you wish I was somebody you never met
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet
No way it was our last night”

Lyrically speaking, ‘Last Night’ stays true to the heartbroken, whiskey-soaked path that Morgan Wallen has made his own in recent years, as he recalls a volatile, straight-talking fight between him and his partner the previous evening.

The song pivots wittily around a classic piece of country wordplay, with Wallen opening with the recollection of what happened ‘last night’, before flipping the phrase around as he pleads with his girlfriend not to let this be their ‘last night’ together.

“I kiss your lips
Make you grip the sheets with your fingertips
Last bottle of Jack we split a fifth
Just talkin’ about life goin’ sip for sip
You, you know you love to fight
And I say shit I don’t mean
But I’m still gon’ wake up wantin’ you and me”

Although unquestionably another track to add to Morgan Wallen's arsenal of heartbreak anthems, ‘Last Night’ finds Wallen embracing a healthy dose of optimism.

Despite his girlfriend telling him - rather bluntly - that she “wished I was somebody you never met”, Wallen steps into the familiar shoes of a hopeless romantic, as he somehow finds reason to cling onto a glimmer of hope that the relationship may still be salvageable.

“No way it was the last night that we break up
I see your tail lights in the dust
You call your momma, I call your bluff
In the middle of the night, pull her right back up
Yeah my, my friends say, “Let her go”
Your friends say, “What the hell,
I wouldn’t trade your kind of love for nothin’ else”

The ‘Thought You Should Know’ hitmaker underlined in a recent interview that he included ‘Last Night’ on his pre-album sampler pack due to it exemplifying the artistic variety that would be featuring across One Thing At A Time. He explained, “‘Last Night’, ‘Everything I Love’ and ‘I Wrote The Book’ felt like the appropriate introduction, sampler, showcase - whatever you want to call it - for my album, because they kind of showcase each style of music that I'm going for. Lyrically, they're all different as well. They're just really diverse and you couldn't really get [any further] from one to the next, so I just wanted to give everybody a little taste of each one”.

‘Last Night’ has unsurprisingly become an unmovable fixture in Morgan Wallen's 2023 setlist, with the country music titan so far performing the crowd-pleasing hit as part of his encore, which also features ‘Heartless’ and his 2018 smash hit, ‘Whiskey Glasses’.

“[Chorus] Last night we let the liquor talk
I can’t remember everything we said but we said it all
You told me that you wished I was somebody you never met
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet
No way it was our last night

[Verse 1] I kiss your lips
Make you grip the sheets with your fingertips
Last bottle of Jack, we split a fifth
Just talkin’ about life goin’ sip for sip
Yeah you, you know you love to fight
And I say shit I don’t mean
But I’m still gon’ wake up wantin’ you and me

[Chorus] I know that last night we let the liquor talk
I can’t remember everything we said but we said it all
You told me that you wished I was somebody you never met
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet
No way it was our last night
No way it was our last night

[Verse 2] No way it was the last night that we break up
I see your tail lights in the dust
You call your momma, I call your bluff
In the middle of the night, pull her right back up
Yeah my, my friends say, “Let her go”
Your friends say, “What the hell,
I wouldn’t trade your kind of love for nothin’ else”

[Chorus 3] Oh baby, last night we let the liquor talk
I can’t remember everything we said but we said it all
You told me that you wished I was somebody you never met
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet

No way it was our last night, we said we’d had enough
I can’t remember everything we said but we said too much
I know you packed your shit and slammed the door right before you left
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet
No way it was our last night
No way it was our last night

[Outro] I know you said this time you really weren’t coming back again,
But baby, baby somethin’s tellin’ me this ain’t over yet.
No way it was our last night
No way it was our last night”

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