As Columbia Nashville ready for the July 12 launch of Megan Moroney’s sophomore album, Am I Okay?, the label held again the title observe because it rolled out particular person songs prematurely of the venture.
The transfer was purposeful: The title matches the fame she has constructed together with her fan base, and he or she needed to catch listeners off guard the first time they heard it.
“I’ve branded myself as the emo cowgirl, and so I knew everyone was going to think that this is going to be a really sad song,” she says. “If you just see it on paper, you’re like, ‘Oh, no, it’s going to be tough.’ And that’s why we didn’t release ‘Am I Okay,’ the title track, ahead of the album, because I wanted everyone to be surprised once the entire album came out.”
The followers wouldn't be the solely ones shocked by “Am I Okay?” Her co-writers, Jessie Jo Dillon (“Messed Up As Me,” “10,000 Hours”) and Luke Laird (“Drink in My Hand,” “Undo It”), hadn’t anticipated to work on one thing so optimistic. Moroney, actually, was somewhat apologetic when she spoke her thoughts throughout an appointment at Laird’s writing cabin on Oct. 2, 2023.
“When I was explaining how I felt, I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to write a love song,’” she recollects. “Like, ‘I’m tired of writing sad songs. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I met this guy, and he’s being really nice to me, and for once, I don’t want to sabotage it. And I think I could be a girlfriend.’ And they were just like, ‘Oh my God, are you okay?’”
That, in fact, turned the title. The shiny, upbeat subject helped meet her musical objectives, too. Moroney knew she can be touring with Kenny Chesney in 2024, and he or she needed a music that might really feel good in a stadium. Laird known as up a chugging observe he had created round a floating guitar intro, and he believed it could match her musically.
“She delivers a song so well with just her and a guitar,” he says. “I thought this one will be easy to do that way, too. There’s only, like, three chords. It’s simple. It’s in her key. And she liked it. And I think that it kind of brought an energy to the room, like more of a live thing.”
They attacked the refrain first, capturing the second Moroney’s then-new squeeze had appeared in a Nashville bar the place she had been hanging with some mates. They threw out some descriptors of a man that almost all girls would discover intriguing — 6 ft 2, humorous, good and “good in…” The songwriter antenna went up at that second, although it solely lasted an on the spot: Would saying he’s good in mattress play at radio? On TV? In household settings?
They had the resolution earlier than they even mentioned it. “We were just rambling,” Moroney notes. “I was probably like, ‘He’s funny and he’s smart and he’s good in…’ And then Jessie Jo or Luke just echoed me. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ There wasn’t too much thought behind it.”
“Instead of just saying it,” Dillon provides, “that felt flirtier, in a way, to just repeat it.”
It wound its strategy to the last hook — “Oh my God, am I okay?” — kicked out in punchy phrases that appeared proper for a gang vocal. Which Moroney didn’t totally settle for at first. “I wasn’t exactly sold on the gang vocals yet,” she recollects. “The last seven syllables of the song are the same note. I was like, ‘Is that weird?’”
As they dug in on the verses, they led with the singer checking to ensure she’s actually respiration, a recognition of the change in persona that this new man had impressed. “I’ve been playing less black keys, baby,” they wrote in that first verse, alluding to the sharps and flats on a piano keyboard, which create an alternate musical scale on their very own.
“It’s alluding to writing less sad music,” Dillon says. “I feel like that was [about] being less emo and writing [fewer] sad songs because she’s known for some of her sad songs as much as ‘Tennessee Orange.’ ”
One of Moroney’s managers later capitalized Black Keys on a lyric sheet, believing it to be a reference to the Nashville-based rock band. That growth shocked all three writers, who had not contemplated that interpretation.
“I’m a huge Black Keys fan, and their s–t can be pretty emo,” Dillon says. “Their lyrics can be pretty sad — and so I guess either way somebody interprets that, it kind of works.”
In verse two, Moroney sang, “And wait” — then actually waited earlier than persevering with, “There’s guys that can communicate.” It was clearly sarcastic; if listeners had any doubt that this “fun little bop,” as Dillon calls it, belonged to Moroney, that confirms it’s legitimately her. “She’s definitely a little snarky,” Laird says, “but the delivery gives it a lightness. I thought it was good.”
Laird completed the demo with the pulsing guitars creating a brand new wave really feel, and all three of them did the gang vocals at the finish of the refrain. It supplied a strong template for the full recording, produced by Sugarland’s Kristian Bush at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio in January. The musicians bumped up the tempo just a few beats per minute, however largely adopted Laird’s demo as a information. With actual musicians changing a few of the programmed components, it took on extra of a Tom Petty pulse, whereas Jordan Schipper’s metal guitar upped the nation quotient. The metal, Brandon Bush’s keyboards and a few of Benji Shanks’ guitar tones leaned hazy or fuzzy.
“I’m totally into ambient pedals right now,” Kristian says. “You don’t really know what you’re getting. You put a tone into it, like you’ll play your steel into it, or you play the guitar into it and it’s a very Brian Eno-y thing, where it starts to sort of randomize at certain frequencies the sound that’s coming out of it. You can control it with your hands, like on these knobs, but it’s all kind of voodoo. It becomes dreamy very quickly.”
Bush heightened the dynamic vary; the observe goes quiet when Moroney sings “Wait…,” and it practically does it once more at the bridge. At the finale, the devices drop out as she delivers the final line, “I think I’m still breathing.” She may have adopted it with a sigh, however it by no means fairly seems.
“At the end of this song, when it cuts off, I wanted you to be waiting for the next song to happen,” Kristian says. “When you’re playing live, at the end of that first song, you want people to be like, ‘Is it over? What’s happening? Oh my God.’ And then all of a sudden, you’re into your next song.” The vocals challenged Moroney. Ironically, the week she sang about her boyfriend, they broke up.
“I’m in the studio having to sing this song about a guy being really nice to me, when actually it was just like three months and he showed me who he actually was,” she says. “And now I have to sing this forever.”
She simply would possibly. Columbia Nashville launched it to nation radio through PlayMPE on Aug. 5. It’s at No. 20 and rising on the Hot Country Songs chart dated Sept. 28. Even if it’s uncharacteristically buoyant for Moroney, the sarcasm nonetheless comes by way of.
“If I’m writing a love song, I must be ill,” she says. “That’s the whole premise of the song.”
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