Country superstar Morgan Wallen dared to sing about loving the Atlanta Braves at Citizens Bank Park

Morgan Wallen did the unthinkable at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night.

The country singer — playing a sold-out show on his “One Night A Time” tour that was originally scheduled for last June but postponed because of a vocal cord injury — came into the home of the Phillies and sang about how much he loves the Atlanta Braves.

And Philly fans sang along.

That’s one measure of the massive popularity of the Tennessee-born singer whose One Thing At A Time was the most streamed album in the U.S. in 2023, topping Taylor Swift’s Midnights by a comfortable margin.

The song in question was “‘98 Braves,” a ballad that draws parallels between a seemingly destined-for-greatness season that ultimately ended in heartbreak — kind of like the 2023 Phillies — and a romance that doesn’t make it in the end.

Wallen — who topped a bill that included country up-and-comers Parker McCollum, Ernest, and Lauren Watkins, and began his 1-hour, 40-minute set just as the first raindrops fell on a chilly South Philly evening — is nothing if not a savvy showman.

He prefaced “‘98 Braves” by saying he considered not playing the song in Philadelphia, but then decided “since you beat our [expletive] in the playoffs so bad two years in a row, I figured you wouldn’t mind too much.”

And after all, how could Wallen’s Philly fans object, when none other than Bryce Harper uses his hit “I Wrote The Book” — a song about the conflict between the profane and the sacred, also rife with baseball references — in his walk-up music rotation at CBP.

Wallen moved from acoustic ballads that conveyed country-ness via the Tennessee twang in his voice — the highlight being his cover of Americana hero Jason Isbell’s “Cover Me Up,” with the stadium lit up with cell phone flashlights — to more than adequately rendered hip-hop leaning party songs like “Sunrise.”

The mostly 20- and 30-something audience — many of whom had been waiting for Wallen to arrive since buying tickets in 2022 — sang along to every word in his 23-song, fast-paced set.

Women wore cowboy hats and short shorts, keeping warm in $80 hoodies on sale at the merch stand, while bros toughed it out in ball caps, jeans, and T-shirts.

Wallen is adored by his loyal fan base, he’s also reviled, or at least regarded as a controversial and suspicious figure, by those on the opposite side of the red and blue fence in America’s pop culture war.

In 2021, Wallen was caught on camera using the N-word, and it briefly seemed like he had seriously damaged his career, as the label that released his then brand new Dangerous: The Double Album suspended him and the CMT video channel stopped playing his songs.

He apologized and told his fans on social media that they shouldn’t defend him. “It’s on me to take ownership of this,” he said, eventually fulfilling a pledge to donate $500,000 to Black organizations, including the Museum of African American music in Nashville.

As much as the racial slur incident made Wallen infamous, he also grew more popular, continuing his run as the most popular country artist of the decade, with the runaway success of both Dangerous and One Thing, which between them include 72 songs.

At CBP, Wallen followed a solid honky-tonk leaning performance by McCollum — and between set music by Travis Scott, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Motley Crue — by making his way to the stage in a golf cart as the speakers pumped out “Broadway Girls,” his 2021 collaboration with rapper Lil Durk.

He set the table with the opener, One Thing’s “Ain’t That Some” with its unabashed embrace of pop country tropes: “I know its cliché to sing Chevrolets, cold beers and Fridays,” Wallen sang, “but that’s just the way it is out here.” Before the song was over, flaming flash pots with heat you could feel 40 yards away were exploding on either side of the stage.

A big part of Wallen’s appeal is his ability to deftly deliver sensitive singer-songwriter moments amid many songs about beer and whiskey — and sometimes within songs about beer and whiskey.

The best drinking song of the night was “Man Made A Bar,” his 2023 hit with Eric Church, which was an addition to the set list with McCollum stepping in for Church.

Too clichéd in comparison was “This Bar,” which is also the name of the watering hole advertised on giant video screens that Wallen is opening in Nashville on Memorial Day weekend. The song pales compared to the late Toby Keith’s far superior “I Love This Bar.”

Rowdy numbers like “Whiskey Glasses” fit well with a rambunctious image that isn’t harmed when Wallen makes headlines by allegedly throwing a chair off a rooftop of a six-story bar in Nashville.

But Wallen’s sad, regretful songs are better than his rowdy numbers. Songs where Wallen showed himself to be a subtly emotive vocalist included not only “Cover Me Up” but also “I Thought You Should Know,” dedicated to his mother for Mother’s Day, and “Sand In My Boots,” which he sang accompanying himself on solo piano.

For the three-song encore, Wallen and his entire band returned to the stage wearing the Phillies new ugly-but-popular blue City Connect jerseys, setting the crowd pleasing and pandering bar very high for future 2024 Philly headliners to follow.

The show closed with “The Way I Talk,” Wallen’s 2016 debut single, a party song that played as an expression of Southern identity. “I ain’t ashamed, matter of fact, I’m damn proud,” Wallen sang, and a stadium full of fans bonded with him, even if they hailed from far north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Here is the Morgan Wallen set list for May 11, 2024, at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

“Ain’t That Some”

“I Wrote the Book”

“One Thing at A Time”

“Everything I Love”

“You Proof”

“‘98 Braves”

“Sunrise”

“Cover Me Up”

“Thought You Should Know”

“Lies Lies Lies”

“Sand In My Boots”

“Up Down”

“Cowgirls”

“Chasin’ You”

“Man Made a Bar”

“Heartless”

“Wasted on You”

“This Bar”

“More Than My Hometown”

“Whiskey Glasses”

Encore

“Thinkin’ Bout Me”

“Last Night”

“The Way I Talk”