By all accounts, Morgan Wallen is on top of the world. He’s moving units in country music at a clip not seen since Garth Brooks. His latest record, One Thing at a Time, is tracking to be the biggest release of 2023, with all 36 songs charting inside the Hot 100. His previous double album, Dangerous, is approaching 8 million in sales. Wallen is selling out stadiums and festivals, has over 6 million Instagram followers, and 10 billion streams.

Wallen is winning. And so was his beautiful mullet—the East Tennessee Waterfall.

Since emerging on the scene, Tennessee native Wallen’s hair style has been anything but “rocky top,” with Wallen consistently embracing the East Tennessee Waterfall look for years. Take one look at Wallen’s mullet and you’ll be typing BASS PRO SHOP into the map app on your phone. Wallen’s “long hair don’t care” look said to the world, “while his songs might be on the radio, this guy is still country enough to buy energy drinks, chewing tobacco, and regular Mountain Dew at gas stations before walking down the street with everything in a thin plastic bag.” Even if you don’t chew tobacco, take one look at Wallen’s honkytonk hockey hair, and the back pocket of your jeans would suddenly singe into a small circle where the tobacco tin should be.

Yes, Morgan Wallen was on top of the world. And his hair was helping. We just didn’t know how much.

So, there’s no other way to really say this. We’re just going to rip off the Band-Aid. If you didn’t know already, Morgan Wallen not only cut off his world class mullet . . .he did us one worse, he completely shaved his head.

No, seriously. Check the Internet.

In a move eerily reminiscent of the Britney Spears meltdown, Morgan Wallen decided to shave his head completely bald while at the height of his superpowers.

To say the least, Wallen’s new look isn’t getting great reviews. Heck, we’re not even sure Morgan likes it himself, as he hasn’t posted a pic with his new hair on his personal social media and has only been seen in a hat since “the incident.” The Internet has been savaging Wallen’s new look, comparing him to rappers, and Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull. One thing is for certain, it’s been transformative. If Wallen’s East Tennessee Waterfall would have looked comfortable breaking bread at the long table at the end of an episode of Duck Dynasty, his new shaved head look has more in common with Fred Durst inciting a riot at Woodstock ’94, or worse—modern day Kevin Spacey.

A haircut this dramatic does make you wonder, what comes first the chicken or the chicken’s mullet? If you were holding Wallen tickets for a concert in the next couple weeks, your excitement level probably went down seeing his new look. Not to mention, since Wallen shaved his head completely bald—this is going to take some time to fix, folks. Will Wallen’s next album be called The Awkward In Between Phase? Only time well tell.

Here at Pulltab Sports, we aren’t in the business of wallowing on the floor next to hair clippings . . .even if they are wonderful East Tennessee Waterfall hair clippings. We’re about solutions, not problems. Which is why we’re going to try to get to the bottom of this erratic move by country music’s current alpha dog.

Why in the world would Morgan Wallen cut off all his hair? As self-proclaimed experts in all things mullets and Mr. Morgan Cole Wallen (if you know his middle name you’re an expert, obviously), we have three theories:

Hypothesis #1: He Got Really Drunk.

Let’s be honest, the most likely scenario here is Morgan got completely juiced and decided to shave his head. If we were doing a redneck reenactment, we think it probably went something like this. He’s with his boys post show, they are close-one-eye-so-you-don’t-see-double-drunk and they get into a late night double dog dare type scenario. There’s probably some chatter about what you would or wouldn’t do, and maybe Morgan gets in a standoff with a buddy who says something like, “There’s no way Mr. Top 40 would cut off that gorgeous East Tennessee Waterfall. You’d be like Sampson and lose all your power, brother.” And Morgan was like, “Hold my beer.”

If this was in fact what happened, the real concern here isn’t Wallen, it’s the people around him. When Wallen grabbed the razor in a drunken haze, where was his buddy or publicist or manager to say, “Nope, this isn’t happening.” Wallen needed his Sam Elliott to tuck him into bed (with his mullet intact) like Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born.

Hypothesis #2: Head Crabs.

We’re not sure if crabs can migrate from the nether region to the scalp, but if anyone could find out it’s Morgan Wallen. While we don’t know for sure, all signs point to Wallen living a life that Bret Michaels, Ric Flair and Nikki Sixx would approve of. We look forward to the documentary on Wallen’s excess that is sure to come out about ten years from now.

We couldn’t properly research this hypothesis, because I’m not interested in having anything related to “crabs” in my personal Internet search history, but we certainly can’t rule out that the glam rock King of Country might have had an airborne STD travel upstream and claim the East Tennessee Waterfall as its victim. While this seems unlikely, we suspect that the amount of sundress, white boots, and cowboy hat clad girls heading backstage at a Wallen concert could have elevated his hairstyle to risk levels not seen since the Wuhan wet market.

Hypothesis #3: Britney Breakdown.

While a breakdown seems unlikely for the carefree Wallen, there are some signs in his lyrics that the weight of superstardom is heavy on his shoulders. Is it possible that Wallen is adopting some self-destructive behaviors as a cry for help?

We’d normally rule this one out based on Wallen’s track record. Afterall, this is a guy who was kicked out of Kid Rock’s bar in Nashville for public intoxication. Check the mugshot.

While it seems farfetched that Wallen had a Britney style breakdown, and it cost the world the East Tennessee Waterfall—we can’t rule it out. Perhaps the bright lights of superstardom drove country music’s biggest superstar to a dark place. It remains a possibility.

In closing, if we had to make a bet, we’re going with scenario #1, and that Wallen’s shaved head is the result of a drunken escapade. The boys were out, everyone went deep, and inexplicably (and shamefully) someone pulled out the razor or clippers and once Wallen called their bluff and took that first shave down to the nubs, there was no going back. He was pot committed, and the East Tennessee Waterfall, sadly, would run dry.

Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that Morgan Wallen remains the great hope of popular country music. It just means you might not want to buy tickets to one of his shows for a few months, at least until he gets past the awkward in-between phase.

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