I was fast asleep when I got the call. I was dreaming of a brighter future, a land of affordable healthcare, and clear communication. A bidet in every home and funding for the arts! I was not dreaming of a world where I’d have to write this article. But, as Chief Piano Correspondent for Talkhouse, I had no choice but to pop out of bed, light a candle, toss my nightcap into my nightcap hamper, and pen this screed.
Yes, the call I received was surely similar to the rumblings that may have come across your desk, the nuisance heard round the world: Morgan Wallen flipped a piano.
Hear ye, hear ye! Pop country superdude’s in-ear monitor mix falters and he expresses himself in piano-less sing song followed by a pheat of physical phrustration!!
Well, this I had to see. I sent out for cigarettes and a fresh nightcap (as a reward for when I finished writing) and flicked on my favorite generic internet video viewer to see if I could get a good angle on the action. Good reporting requires good research, and I’ll be damned if I’m to be accused of libel by someone this year who isn’t a third-grader playing Connect Four against me me in Washington Square Park (yes, Tammy, you are a cheater cheater pumpkin eater, and I’ve got bodycam footage to prove it).
What I saw shocked me.
A piano, we know, is heavy. Heavy enough to be a premiere choice of cartoon assasination rivaled only by the anvil. And if anyone told me Morgan Wallen had flipped an anvil over I’d be just as eager to see it for myself. It takes a very strong big boy to flip over something with the mass of a piano. I’m all for letting the moment carry the art, and if fed-up-big-and-strong-boy Morgan Wallen’s passion truly led him to conjure the strength of one thousand Garth Brookses and channel that into a toppling of an instrument averaging 400 pounds, well, more power to him. Manners be damned.
But Morgan Wallen did not flip over a piano. Morgan Wallen flipped over a fake piano shell that housed a Nord keyboard.
The lies must be stopped! I covered the endemic of Nord Shame in a previous column for Talkhouse, so I suggest you quickly read that masterwork if you’re not familiar with the concept,
but the gist of it is that 99% of the time you see a piano on stage at a big ole concert, it’s actually a keyboard hidden inside of a custom built shell. There are practical reasons for this, and although the deception hurts my heart, I understand the need for practicality in recession based rock & roll.
But if you’re going to destroy an instrument on stage, make it count. If they’re going to dabble in dramatic disrespect, the least a Morgan Wallen type could do is obliterate an instrument of physical substance. Flipping over a piano would be impressive and the fury required would be akin to rising up to the heavens and punching God in the jaw.
Tipping over a Nord is like stomping on a Texas Instruments calculator after you couldn’t get it to spell BOOBS properly.
What’s worse is someone built that Nord Shame Shell specifically for the Morgan Wallen tour. If there is any MDF Craftsmanship to mourn, it is for the shell itself. And the goal of the shell is to shield the public from the depressing reality that, rather than a meticulously regulated walnut hammer-action instrument, Morgan Wallen is tinkling on a red plastic Scandinavian music computer. But when Morgan Wallen gets sad and knocks over his toy, we the public can see the Nord tumble out. And the illusion is ruined.
This video shows the moment the keyboard falls out of the piano:
This makes me mad. So mad that I almost flip my laptop over. But I only have one, so I don’t. And with that, I realize that Morgan Wallen still is making a point with his actions. We don’t go to the arena to see the pop star perform without expecting some form of decadence, and decadence is in the eye of the be-flipper. Morgan Wallen’s actions prove that he is successful enough to keep a Nord Shell Repair Technician on retainer, likely stashed in a bay underneath the tour bus, frozen in cryo-sleep and woken up in times like these.
While we might disagree with the wasteful destruction at hand, the tippy tantrum does fulfill the promise of an arena-grade presentation, and deep down I think we do love to see the gall of a performer in that setting. It is not unlike how at the encore of every Bruce Springsteen concert, the Boss beheads the horn player who squeaked the most with a guillotine (while pronouncing it “gill-o-teen” to keep it Jersey), or how Lady Gaga bites off a backup dancer’s finger during the “Bad Romance” intro every night. We’re paying for hubris, and our heroes know how to reward us accordingly.
But here’s the irony (pronounced “ernie” to keep it God’s Country): if Morgan Wallen had been playing a real piano, he wouldn’t have gotten so steamed, surely not mad enough to tip the dang thing. If he had trouble hearing the instrument in his in-ears all he’d have to do is remove an earbud and hear the acoustic glory of the piano pass the sound waves a short distance through the air to his rich, rich ear drums and he could sing his pretty song for his adoring fans. No flipping required. But the overcorrection of an expensive keyboard inside a custom shell ultimately led to both of those things being damaged, and more importantly, me being awoken from my slumber.
So for all our sake, let’s bring back the real piano, shall we? We could save ourselves a whole lot of grief and gain some genuine harmonic overtones in the process! The magnificent, unflippable piano, long may it reign.
In Loving Memory of Morgan Wallen’s Nord
Cue Vitamin C’s “The Graduation Song (Yes That’s What We Named It)”
