NASHVILLE SPECIAL 2024: MEGAN MORONEY MAKES HER OWN LUCK
Did she or didn’t she? Was it or wasn’t it?
No one has saddled mystery and momentum and ridden it for the win like Megan Moroney, the Savannah, Georgia-raised songwriter with a gift for twisting life into intriguing maybes. In a TikTok world where clever snippets, intriguing covers and funny dances rule and social media titillations can catch lightning, Moroney is a thoroughly modern vixen who knows how to flip a rumor or innuendo.
Maybe it was Morgan Wallen’s shirt. Certainly he liked her Instagram post.
But the young woman who called her major label debut Lucky is anything but. Luck may be on her side, but Moroney has her own superpower.
A shrewd observer of the coming-of-age tribulations, vexations and stumbles of her generation, the 26-year-old blonde writes with the same incisive vulnerability, joy and brash moxie as Taylor Swift and Mary Chapin Carpenter, as well as pop peers Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Miley Cyrus.
“Tennessee Orange,” the breakout track that launched a massive bidding war, scored her a coveted Country Music Association Song of the Year nomination. If “Orange” was the Southeastern Conference Romeo and Juliet, her recent “No Caller ID” is the washout of a particularly feckless suitor who knows the most damaging times to call. Having taken control of resolving her heartbreak, Moroney is finding the strength to tamp down the desire to pick up. In owning the struggle, she makes real the enduring plague of casual dalliances that connect at the heart for teens, grown-ups, straights, LGBTQIA+ and any other seekers of love—they experience the throb and doubt the way it fully feels.
But more than that, Moroney is a canny artist. She recognizes there’s more to living in full than pining over a boy, flipping the script on a cad or falling. Whether she’s seeking wisdom about standing by her man while sorting through June Carter Cash’s reckoning with Johnny Cash on “Why Johnny,” or laughing off a new girl’s assessment on “I’m Not Pretty,” or owning the self-sufficient, self-definition and especially self-respect of “Georgia Girl” or giving herself the compassion and clear-eyed self-assessment we all deserve on “Girl In The Mirror,” her lyrics have a genuine insight, and the melodies perk the ears just so.
It doesn’t hurt that as a University of Georgia student, the Kappa Delta interned for Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, himself a man who’d had indie success with Billy Pilgrim before becoming a massive country star. After graduation, Moroney moved to Nashville and ran into Bush, and the pair started talking about what she wanted her music to be.
Moroney’s debut EP, Pistol Made of Roses, established her unapologetic gumption and grit. Velvety voice declaring, “I love me, so you don’t have to,” Moroney arrived as an heiress apparent to stand-your-ground country superstars Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood and The Chicks. Not mean-spirited or swaggering just for the sake of it, Moroney and Bush fashioned a new wave of country icon that was as much firecracker as femme fatale.
With the opening slot on all of Kenny Chesney’s 2024 stadium and amphitheater dates, a slot previously held by CMA Female Vocalists of the Year Kacey Musgraves, Gretchen Wilson and Underwood, she will be exposed to over a million members of No Shoes Nation this summer. Traditionally a tour that curates support to launch artists to the next level—see Eric Church, Keith Urban, Dierks Bentley, Kelsea Ballerini, Old Dominion—Sun Goes Down 2024 should deliver Moroney to hard-ticket-selling, real-venue status.
Between Lucky being named one of Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2023, her own sold-out runs of headlining club and small theater dates and “Can’t Break Up Now,” a duet with Old Dominion, climbing the charts, she has significant momentum going into this year. Having her second album almost completely written, don’t be surprised if she’s road-testing the songs to hit even harder with her sophomore release.
