Why Morgan Wallen, back with new album Im the Problem, is a controversy-proof country sensation: A cultural lightning rod

“I guess I’m the problem … If I’m so awful, then why’d you stick around this long?”So asks Morgan Wallen on “I’m the Problem,” the title-track hit of his fourth studio album, which dropped on Friday.Clearly, the 32-year-old country sensation — who has taken the genre to the top of the pop charts in recent years — is as problematic as he is popular.But despite all his transgressions — from a video of him using the N-word in 2021 to hurling a chair off a rooftop bar last year to him abruptly bolting at the end of “Saturday Night Live” in March — Wallen is still the hottest thing in country music.Or, arguably, music period.Wallen’s fans — of which there are enough to fill stadiums — are sticking around through all of the controversies that would have killed many a career.Instead, he has racked up three Billboard Hot 100 No.

1 hits and 10 country chart-toppers.Wallen represents a big part of the country that sees themselves in him — flaws, mullet and all.“I think Morgan is very much a cultural lightning rod,” Holly Gleason — Nashville editor of Hits magazine – told The Post.“It’s the difference between how New York and LA and the flyover [between them] tend to view each other.”Instead of getting canceled after his series of scandals — which began in 2020 with him being arrested after being kicked out of Kid Rock’s Nashville bar and partying without a mask at the height of COVID — Wallen has only come back stronger.And bigger.

His new album is a 37-track opus — featuring guest appearances by Eric Church (“Number 3 and Number 7”), Tate McRae (“What I Want”) and his “I Had Some Help” partner Post Malone (“I Ain’t Comin’ Back”) — that has already spawned four hits: “Lies Lies Lies,” “Love Somebody,” “I’m the Problem” and the current single “Just in Case.”Yet the Sneedville, Tennessee native hasn’t exactly embraced all of the trappings of his superstardom.“I think Morgan...