Country musician Megan Moroney says she writes sad songs for sad people. It's making her a star.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Not so long before her platinum-selling single “Tennessee Orange” became inescapable on country radio, this year scoring Megan Moroney her first-ever CMA nominations (song of the year and artist of the year), the up-and-comer was attending the University of Georgia. The life of a country musician? It wasn't supposed to happen.
“It is truly crazy because I went to school to be an accountant,” Moroney tells The Associated Press. “And here we are.”
Fate clearly had other plans. When she was a freshman, Moroney opened for singer John Langston at a sorority event, performing a few Miranda Lambert covers. There, she met Chase Rice, who told her she could open for her at the Georgia Theater — but she needed to write an original song, first.
"So, I wrote my first song, called ‘Stay A Memory,' and I performed it,” she says. “I didn't put it out, but maybe one day I'll tease it.”
After that show, she knew she wanted to move to Nashville and pursue music — but first, she switched her major to focus on music business and interned with Sugarland's Kristian Bush, who'd later produce her stellar debut album, 2023's “Lucky.”
After graduating in 2020, she moved to Nashville, and in 2022, released a debut EP, “Pistol Made of Roses,” catching the attention of all-star songwriters who she'd eventually work with on “Lucky,” like Lori McKenna, Luke Laird, and Jessie Jo Dillon. The rest is only history because of the strength of her songwriting — “emo cowgirl" music, as she calls it.
That's evidenced throughout “Lucky” from the deceptively optimistic “Sad Songs for Sad People,” to the Johnny Cash and June Carter-referencing “Why Johnny” to the opener “I'm Not Pretty,” with its Gen Z Taylor Swift -level acuity: “Did you...