Somebody outside the 2024 {twenty twenty-four} People's Choice Country Awards must have been landscaping, because comedian Matt Rife looks like he got into a fight with a lawnmower. We know, we know: "Business in the front, party in the back." But nobody's throwing a party for this mullet.
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00:00Somebody outside the 2024 People's Choice Country Awards must have been landscaping,
00:05because comedian Matt Rife looks like he got into a fight with a lawnmower. We know, we
00:09know — business in the front, party in the back — but nobody's throwing a party for
00:13this mullet.
00:14The huge country music event saw comedian Matt Rife debut a new hairdo, and something
00:19tells us he was inspired by the evening's biggest winner, Morgan Wallen, four-time awardee,
00:24proud sometimes-mullet owner, and, as it turns out, maybe Rife's hair salon reference pick.
00:29But the controversial comedian opted to try what seems to be the early stages of a Wallen-esque
00:33mullet probably isn't a surprise to everyone. After all, Rife is relatively fresh out of
00:38a relationship with Jessica Lord, so there's a pretty good chance he wants to experiment
00:43a little. However, upon closer inspection, it turns out the up-and-coming funnyman has
00:47actually been sporting a slightly longer do for a while leading up to the People's Choice
00:51Country Awards.
00:53Nice mullet.
00:54In an August 2024 pic Rife posted to Instagram of himself with 50 Cent, the back of his hair
00:59already looked a little longer than what we're used to. Granted, it could still easily have
01:04passed as a regular hairstyle. But in another pic he shared closer to the end of August,
01:08the beginnings of a mullet were much harder to miss. Perhaps we didn't pick up on the
01:12early days of this brave new style because it was still so fresh, or maybe we just didn't
01:17want to believe it. Because, you know, it's a mullet.
01:21Mullet hair.
01:23But sure enough, by the time Rife hit the red carpet at the Glitzy Awards ceremony,
01:27his striking new hairdo was unmistakable. Maybe we shouldn't be all that shocked, though.
01:31After all, while Rife has come close to being canceled, Wallen's image isn't exactly squeaky
01:36clean either. See, Wallen's felony arrest, the fact that he's officially banned from
01:40the AMAs, among other awards shows, and several other notable scandals.
01:44When music star Morgan Wallen was arrested, he allegedly threw a chair from the roof of
01:48a bar.
01:49With all of that in mind, could Rife's hair be some kind of show of solidarity? The jury's
01:52still out. Whatever Matt Rife's reasoning for going the Kentucky Waterfall route, it
01:57bears mentioning that he's far from the only person to have been inspired by Morgan Wallen's
02:01iconic mullet. In fact, the singer-songwriter has spoken extensively about his hairdo becoming
02:05a trend.
02:06Let me see the back. That is solid. Show it to the camera here. All the way around. That's
02:13a solid mullet.
02:15Despite first sporting the mullet for a surprisingly heartwarming reason — his dad always rocked
02:19one and they're super close — Wallen acknowledged that it eventually ended up becoming his signature
02:24look. So much so, in fact, that he started noticing his fans trying it out for themselves.
02:29As Wallen proudly told People in 2019,
02:31"...dudes show up to my concerts with mullets and cut-off flannels. I was like, man, what
02:35is going on here? I love it, so I've stuck to it."
02:38Of course, not everyone is as enamored with the cut as Rife and the scores of Wallen fans
02:42who followed suit to match it. In fact, in that very same interview, the country star
02:46admitted that his own team were pretty unenthusiastic when he first debuted the style. He recalled,
02:51"...everybody else in my label and management were like, what are you doing?"
02:55Who knows? Maybe Rife fell into the former category rather than the latter. And luckily
02:59for the budding mullet-ee, in another 2019 chat about the do, Wallen detailed the steps
03:04it took for him to properly nail the divisive style. He joked to the Associated Press,
03:08"...it really took a few months to grow into a mullet. I think about six months before
03:12you could see what I was trying to do. Before those six months, you might have wondered
03:16like, what is this guy doing?"
03:18Guess that means the comedian's early-stage mullet could one day live up to its possible
03:21inspiration. Until then, we guess we'll avert our eyes. To be honest, though, we'll probably
03:26avert them once it's grown out properly, too.