Riding a hot streak that has seen his single “Last Night” top Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the last nine weeks — overall it has notched 12 weeks atop the chart — Morgan Wallen cruised into Ford Field Thursday night for his first of two sold-out performances at the Detroit Lions’ place of residence.

The country music superstar breezily performed for 100 minutes before a crowd clad heavily in cutoff sleeves, cowboy boots and denim everything. He returns to the downtown stadium on Friday, where another crowd of roughly 55,000-plus — official crowd figures were not available following Thursday’s concert — awaits the 30-year-old chart-topper.

Thursday’s concert was the Tennessee native’s fourth concert back following a doctor-ordered six week vocal rest, after he was diagnosed with vocal fold trauma in early May.

He was in fine form, sporting a backward baseball cap and a crispy white T-shirt most of the night, as he rolled through songs from his 2018 debut album, “If I Know Me,” 2021’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” and this year’s sales blockbuster “One Thing at a Time.”

“One Thing at a Time” is the country’s current No. 1 album, and it has spent a total of 14 weeks perched atop Billboard’s Top 200 albums tally, more than any other album has in the last decade. (The last artist who topped the chart longer was Adele with “21,” which was No. 1 for 24 weeks in 2011 and 2012.) Thursday marked the second time this month that Ford Field has hosted an artist while their album was No. 1 in the country, following Taylor Swift’s two-night stand on June 9 and 10.

Like the Swift concerts, Wallen’s fans came armed and ready to sing, both with and at the artist. But Wallen’s show was a much more straightforward affair than Swift’s, with relatively stripped down production, aside from the plumes of fire that shot into the air throughout the night, a heavy dose of rock and roll flair for the country-themed evening.

Wallen, for his part, is more baseball cap country than cowboy hat country, and a fair number of his songs — including “Sunrise,” “Cowgirls” and “Wasted on You” — are built on hip-hop drum beds, while “Last Night” features a heavy dose of hip-hop cadence in its delivery. Baseball cap country is more reflective of the world outside country music than traditional country, and it acknowledges those influences on its version of country music; it’s a melting pot of Hank Williams, Jr., Nelly and Metallica, and Wallen’s pre-show playlist (which included songs by Queens of the Stone Age, Tom Petty, AC/DC and Eminem) reflected this reality.

Wallen hit the stage at 9:15 p.m., following a 1990s Chicago Bulls-style introduction of his six-member band, set to the tune of the Alan Parsons Project’s “Sirius.” The party anthem “Up Down” kicked off the evening, with fireworks shooting off and flames belching into the air.

Wallen’s rise to the summit of the country mountain was relatively swift, and Thursday’s performance — his first performance in an NFL stadium on his current run of dates — followed last year’s headlining appearance at Faster Horses. Prior to that, his biggest local concert was opening for Florida Georgia Line at DTE Energy Music Theatre in 2019; a year earlier, he was performing at the Emerald Theatre in Mount Clemens.

On stage, he moved nimbly, flashing his mischievous grin whenever he caught the camera, which beamed his likeness onto the two massive video screens that flanked the stage. He connected with his fans up close, in the general audience pit which crowded around three sides of the stage extension where he spent most of his time, but he didn’t always project his body movements toward the full stadium, reaching all the way to the fans in the upper rows in the back of the building.

He kept his stage banter limited, though he thanked the crowd early on for their support, pointing to fans and touching his chest as a way of signifying how much the cheers meant to him. “I really like Detroit, because y’all drafted my boy Hendon Hooker,” he said of the former University of Tennessee quarterback who was recently drafted by the Lions, “and I like you more now. Thank you for receiving me with such love, that really means a lot to me.” Later in the evening, during the encore, Wallen sported a Lions jersey, No. 12, with Hooker’s name on the back.

He sang a slew of makeup and breakup songs (“Everything I Love,” “’98 Braves,” “You Proof”), songs about small towns (“Still Goin Down”), a song for his mom (“Thought You Should Know”) and songs about drinking (“This Bar,” “Whiskey Friends,” “Whiskey Glasses”). He dialed all the way back for “Sand in My Boots,” which he started off performing alone while seated a piano, the most naked moment of the night, and the most effective for that very reason.

Opener Hardy, the Mississippi-born hellraiser who hit the stage early in the night and draped himself in the American flag while wearing a pair of Air Jordan 1s on his feet, joined Wallen for their joint single “He Went to Jared,” a spirited rendition that saw them both shotgunning beers at the close of the song. Later, Wallen was joined by his other opener, Ernest, for a run through of “Cowgirls.”

But even as the show wrapped with a three-song encore, which included the much anticipated “Last Night” (it came second to last), it didn’t quite end for Wallen. After his band left the stage and the house lights came up in the building, he was still out there on stage, signing autographs for fans on T-shirts, hats, whatever he was handed. He stayed out there for a full five minutes, signing away, Sharpie in hand. The size and scale of stadium concerts sometimes makes them difficult to render personal, but Wallen found a way.

agraham@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @grahamorama

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