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\n\tHardy<\/a> counts Morgan Wallen<\/a> one of his closest friends. They\u2019ve written hits together, shared a stage many times, including at Wallen\u2019s stadium shows in Knoxville, Tennessee, last year, and were even FaceTiming with each other at the very moment Hardy was involved in a horrifying 2022 bus crash<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tNeedless to say, Hardy has some thoughts on the way his collaborator has been treated in the past for his various public missteps, including a chair-tossing incident<\/a> at a Nashville bar in 2024 and the use of a racial slur in a 2021 video that, for a time, resulted in Wallen being banned from awards shows and even on radio.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think a lot of people\u2026big companies were really hard on him early on. And a lot of it is that people feel like they owe him, because he made a mistake \u2014 especially the big one that we all know,\u201d Hardy says, alluding to Wallen\u2019s use of the slur<\/a>, during a new episode of Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s Nashville Now<\/a><\/em> podcast.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think, especially the gatekeepers, at radio and iHeart and people like that, they opened back up for him\u2026 because they banned him for a while, they literally banned him from the radio,\u201d he continues. \u201cI think people came to their senses and they were like, \u2018We made a mistake and this guy\u2019s really good and maybe we should give him a chance.\u2019 And I think the floodgates just opened.\u201d<\/p>\n