It’s 6pm on a rainy Thursday evening in Cambridge but, aside from the characteristically dreary English weather, the mixed-age crowd waiting outside 850-capacity venue the Junction are dressed as if they’re going to a Nashville rodeo. Stetson hats, cowboy boots, denim shorts, check shirts and homemade signs signify that country fever among the mile-long queue is at boiling point ahead of tonight’s gig: a sold-out performance from American country star Megan Moroney.
As the Hannah Montana classic ‘Best Of Both Worlds’ booms out of the speakers, the Georgia-born singer-songwriter walks on stage with a glittery guitar and an all-male band sporting matching black vests with “emo cowgirl country” printed on them; the same slogan tops and caps are being snapped up at the merch stand. Midway through her singalong-filled set, which follows summer support slots for genre legend Kenny Chesney at American stadiums, she beams, “Y’all have made my dreams come true”. Despite the comparatively intimate venue, she’s equally appreciative of her enthusiastic British fanbase, which spans parents and their children, twenty-something friends and older couples. “It’s crazy to be able to come so far from home and have y’all know the words to all these songs.”
It’s a far cry from her initial life trajectory, having planned to follow in the footsteps of her mum by studying accountancy at university. “Where I’m from, you do what your parents do,” she tells NME. “Most people don’t leave home or go too far.” Despite coming from a musically inclined family – “My dad would get me to dissect James Taylor lyrics as a 10-year-old,” Moroney recalls of hearing The Eagles’ music – she says that becoming a country artist was “such a crazy, left-field idea”. But, having learned how to play guitar during high school when a knee injury left her in a wheelchair, a chance performance at her sorority’s charity country concert during freshman year would change all that.
The sorority blew their budget on Jon Langston but still needed an opening act, so Moroney happily stepped up to perform three country covers. Unbeknownst to her, among the crowd was American artist Chase Rice who invited her to join him at a show – but there was a catch: she’d have to play an original song. After writing ‘Stay A Memory’, aged 19, Moroney realised that songwriting came “very easy” to her. “I was like ‘I don’t know how I’m going to make this happen, but I’m going to’,” she recalls, now having set her sights on Nashville. Her parents didn’t want her to drop out, however, so it wasn’t until four years later that she finally followed her dreams.
Though daunting – Moroney admits that she “really didn’t know if it was going to work out” – she had a back up plan: work for a label and hope they would discover she was an aspiring singer. It wasn’t until a year of living in Nashville and writing every day that she thought she’d be able to make a living out of music. Because everything had been closed due to the pandemic, it also took longer than expected for Moroney to play her first full band show at rite of passage venue Whiskey Jam, having previously only done acoustic sets. After finding a manager and writing for another eight months, she had ready the six songs that would form her 2022 debut EP ‘Pistol Made of Roses’.
A support slot with Jamey Johnson followed, as did Moroney’s independently released 2023 breakout single ‘Tennessee Orange’, which was recorded, mixed and mastered in 48 hours. With no real team or label, she even made the single’s cover art on her phone. “It’s crazy to think about what it turned into considering how little help we had,” she recalls. Initially thought of as an album track, Moroney didn’t think non-American football fans would care. She couldn’t have been more wrong: one million streams in five days and more than 250million to date on Spotify alone.
The success of ‘Tennessee Orange’ led to Moroney receiving 18 different record label offers, though she recalls that “it was weird and sketchy because some were offering me a million dollars and they’d never talked to me”. Her own marketing experience as an intern with Sugarland’s Kristian Bush (her now long-term producer) proved beneficial as she was savvy to the game, perhaps more than most new artists. “I wasn’t going to work with someone just because they saw a number, because what if my next project doesn’t necessarily have the numbers, are you gonna drop me and not pay attention? I want people invested in my songwriting and who I am as an artist,” she affirms.
This was especially important as her debut album was almost finished. “I was excited to show people I wasn’t just the ‘Tennessee Orange’ girl,” she says. Although she’s been on the road since 2022 and her debut major label album ‘Lucky’ was only released last May, the singer’s workrate hasn’t slowed down. Her “more grown-up and vulnerable” sophomore record, ‘Am I Okay?’, followed in July this year. “I don’t even know where it came from,” she says, adding that five of the 13 songs – mostly about “having horrible taste in men” – were written in two days.
“It’s all over the board of being a human in your twenties,” she explains. “There’s something for everyone; there are love songs, hopeful songs, heartbreak songs, in the middle songs, songs about my friends and grief and loss.” The key for Moroney was to write “whenever I felt like it” while on tour and, crucially, to not overthink. “Lots of people put pressure on their second album having to be better than their first and show growth, but I saw it as my second collection of songs. And if you don’t like this, I’ll probably do something different next time anyway.”
Undoubtedly, Moroney’s personal lyrical approach has made her songs stand out amid the recent country revival on both sides of the Atlantic, with many artists pivoting their sound to suit the trend. “I’m sure the labels are telling them to, but what’s great about country is that if it’s not authentic the fans know right away,” Moroney says. “Any artist in the world can put out a country song or album, but if it’s not believable, it won’t last long.” Though, as the singer has proven with her latest record, she’s become a genuine force to be reckoned with in the country world.
‘Am I Okay?’ is currently the third-biggest country album from a female artist this year, behind only Beyoncé and Kacey Musgraves – a huge achievement so early into Moroney’s career. “Anything with Kacey next to it freaks me out, because she’s the reason I wanted to write songs,” she says, recalling being blown away by ‘Same Trailer Different Park’. “She’s such a smart writer and I fell in love with it,” Moroney adds of Musgraves’ seminal debut album.
Considering Moroney’s talent and versatility as a writer – ‘Man on the Moon’ is wickedly witty, ‘Am I Okay?’ carries Olivia Rodrigo-style punchiness, and ‘Girl in the Mirror’ delivers an important message about self-love – it’s easy to imagine her music proving similarly influential with the next generation. “There are a lot of women and girls at my shows, but you can definitely find any kind of person there,” Moroney says. “I tell the stories but then people make them their own”.
Megan Moroney’s sophomore album ‘Am I Okay?’ is out now on Spotify, Apple Music and more.