Most songs that reach for the Superman metaphor use it to flatter somebody. This one uses it to confess. Wallen takes the cape off in the first verse — the mugshot, the drinking, the girl he lost — and spends the rest of the song admitting that the costume was never going to hide any of it from the one person whose opinion he actually can’t afford to lose.
The hook turns the metaphor inside out: kryptonite isn’t some outside force here, it’s a bottle he keeps reaching for himself. That’s the difference between a song about being a hero and a song about trying to be one anyway, on the nights when it isn’t going well — written, by Wallen’s own account, with his son specifically in mind.
“But Superman’s still just a man sometimes”
Morgan Wallen — “Superman”
Full lyrics are licensed through Musixmatch and hosted on AZLyrics — not reproduced here.
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