Megan Moroney Propels Further Into Country Stardom With Sophomore Album [Interview]
Megan Moroney. Photo: CeCe Dawson
When the time came for Megan Moroney to start working on her sophomore album, the breakout star was the busiest she’s ever been.
Since launching onto the scene in a big way with her double-Platinum debut hit “Tennessee Orange,” and its subsequent follow-up smashes “I’m Not Pretty” and “Girl In The Mirror,” Moroney has been shining from one major industry milestone to the next. She released her debut album Lucky to critical and commercial acclaim in 2023 and has garnered over a billion total global career streams. She’s been awarded with a CMT and MusicRow Award, and was named the New Female Artist of the Year at the 59th ACM Awards, where she reigned as the most-nominated female artist with six nods.
On the live front, Moroney has multiple sold-out headline tours now under her belt, including “The Lucky 2.0 Tour” which sold out in five minutes. After getting a taste of the major player’s game on the road with Jamey Johnson and Brooks & Dunn, Moroney graduated to opening for one of the top entertainers in live music, Kenny Chesney, where she has continued to charm stadium-sized audiences as if it were her name in the largest print.
Needless to say, she’s arrived.
Understandably, making a sophomore album in the wake of a monumental breakout success can lead to some pressure. But Moroney says she was fortunately too busy to let it get to her head.
“There’s so much pressure around your sophomore album, or at least that’s what I heard it was going to be like,” she tells MusicRow. “As soon as Lucky came out, I did see people online saying, ‘What’s her next album going to be like? Is it going to be this good or is this just a moment she’s having?’
“In theory, there was supposed to be a lot of pressure on the album, but because I was so busy touring, it didn’t happen that way,” she says. “I just kept writing songs about my life and songs that I liked. One day, I looked down and I had a whole album.”
In pockets of available writing time, Moroney crafted a 14-song album that further highlights her skill for relatability, creativity and wit with the effort, titled Am I Okay?
She says the title track set the tone for the album. Written with Luke Laird and Jessie Jo Dillon, the song finds the singer-songwriter meeting a nice guy and marveling that they do, in fact, exist within the masses of players and losers.
“Once I had written that song, I knew exactly what direction the album was going in,” Moroney says, adding that it jolted her forward in creating the project. “Then there was one day where we wrote ‘Indifferent, ’28th of June’ and ‘The Girls’ all in the same day.”
With her trusted collaborators, Moroney has further pushed herself into vulnerable subject matter, like being rejected, toxic codependency and even death, but she’s also held a steadfast grip on the empowered, slightly sly writing style that makes for a great Instagram selfie caption—see “Indifferent.”
“I always say that I have two sides. I’m either ’emo cowgirl country’ or ‘bad bitch country.’ It really just depends on what kind of mood I’m in,” she says. “When I was growing up, Miranda Lambert is an artist that [helped inspire that in me]. She has very vulnerable songs like ‘Tin Man,’ but she also has the ‘I’ll burn your house down’ songs.”
When Moroney was in her “emo cowgirl country” mood making Am I Okay?, she mined deep. She tackles anniversaries that sting on “28th of June,” and the death of a loved one on “Heaven By Noon.” She sends emotional well-wishes to a past love on “Hope You’re Happy,” loses a guy to a beauty queen on “Miss Universe” and debates on starting up a situationship again on the previously-released fan favorite “No Caller ID.”
On “Mama, I Lied,” Moroney lets her mother in on her pain. With the first line of the chorus saying, “Mama, I lied, he ain’t a good guy. He makes me cry sometimes out of the blue,” connections could be drawn to her “Tennessee Orange,” where Moroney tells her mama that the boy she’s met doesn’t make her cry.
“In early college, [I would sometimes] lie to my mom about a guy being nice because I wanted her to like him if we ended up being together. I wouldn’t tell her the whole truth of how he was treating me. Because once you tell your, mom she doesn’t forgive,” she says of the song.
A highlight on the album comes with “I Know You,” a track that finds Moroney mournfully accepting that she’s being cheated on again. While the lyrics are uncomfortably relatable to anyone who’s been through it, the stirring melody of the track reflects the feeling of a toxic pattern.
“I love all the layered harmonies on that song,” Moroney says. “It almost didn’t make the album because it sounded so different, but I like that about the song.”
The album’s “Hell of a Show” is another lyrical highlight. The short song finds the star who seems to have it made, with her name in marquee lights and fans wrapped around the building, but in reality, she leaves the stage to cry herself to sleep over her partner’s treatment of her. Written solely by Moroney, the star says it was just an honest struggle she needed to get out after one of her shows.
Another highlight from Am I Okay? is Moroney’s arena-sized “Man On The Moon,” a fun romp about needing lightyears of space from an aggravating guy.
“That song is so fun to sing live,” she says. “Because I’ve been on tour so much and the venues are getting bigger, we wanted some more powerhouse songs. The live show was definitely something I considered in the writing process.”
Written with Jessie Jo Dillon, Jessi Alexander and Connie Harrington, “Noah” is a stand-out of the tunes that were not previously released. In a hilariously-quintessential songwriter fashion, it’s not about a past love, just someone whose name sparked Moroney’s intrigue as a song title.
“Noah is someone I met platonically as friends. I literally thought to myself ‘That would be a great song title.’ The name Noah sings really well,” she says. “I thought, ‘How can I write a song about this guy that I don’t know at all? That’s kind of creepy.’
“The Notebook is my favorite movie in the world. It’s not the exact story, obviously Allie and Noah weren’t listening to Eric Church [like the characters in the song], but it’s written from of Allie’s point of view when she was about to marry that other guy but still thinking about Noah.”
Sonically, Moroney has mostly stayed in the groove of her previous music for Am I Okay? Collaborating once again with hitmaker Kristian Bush for production, she recorded the album at Blackbird Studios in Nashville and was meticulous in making sure the album reflected her desire for an organic sound.
“Kristian is brilliant. He knows so much about music in general and he has helped me create my sound,” Moroney says. “I think you can tell that real musicians are playing on my album. That’s really important to me. My biggest fear when making an album is it sounding like it was put into a formula that sounds like everything else. Kristian makes sure that we stay away from that.”
With her new album out in the world, Moroney will undoubtedly stay busy. After she finishes out Chesney’s tour, she will head overseas in September for her “Georgia Girl Tour,” where she will leave more adoring fans in her wake.
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