Megan Moroney Sings the Emo Cowgirl Blues on ‘Am I Okay?’

Megan Moroney is deep in her feels on her new album Am I Okay?, the follow-up to her breakthrough debut, Fortunate, which Rolling Stone named one of the best nation album of 2023. Whereas that album arrived on the energy of the college-football-as-meet-cute anthem “Tennessee Orange,” Am I Okay? dispenses with any such novelties and instantly leans into twenty first century angst.

Moroney has been describing herself because the “Emo Cowgirl,” lassoing a musical development that’s been choosing up steam over the past 12 months or so. However till now, the majority of the emo-country success has been principally reserved for the dudes: Zach Bryan, Charles Wesley Godwin, and Wyatt Flores have all seen their stars rise by laying their feelings naked. Moroney is joyful to guide the cost for the ladies, with the “unhappy yeehaw vibes” of Kaitlin Butts and the punk nation of Avery Anna proper behind her.

That is an album stuffed with references to remedy (“No Caller ID”), fears of dying alone (“Third Time’s the Allure”), and blasé resignation (“Detached”). There’s even a mournful goodbye ballad — the devastating “Heaven By Midday” — impressed by the dying of Moroney’s uncle in the course of the 9/11 terrorist assaults. However regardless of its heavy coronary heart, Am I Okay? isn’t a dour venture. Moroney’s deft method round a lyric and producer Kristian Bush’s radio-ready contact mix to make this one of the vital pleasing listening experiences of the 12 months.

Take a look at “Man on the Moon,” an upbeat rocker that finds Moroney wishing she might jettison an annoying suitor off into deep area. “Houston he’s an issue/He’s leaving, then he’s calling,” Moroney sings within the first line, permitting herself to mine the humor within the impediment course that’s twentysomething relationship. In “Miss Universe,” which opens with shimmering “ahh-ahh” vocals paying homage to Queen, she laments being dumped by a man who traded up. However even that deflating loss is seen by means of a prism of self-awareness: “Hell, it might’ve been worse/at the least my complete world left me for Miss Universe,” Moroney shrugs, delivering the Gen Z nation inverse of “You ain’t a magnificence/however hey you’re alright.”

However the Georgia native isn’t totally avoiding heartbreak on Am I Okay?. In her dishonest track “I Know You,” Moroney accepts her function because the idiot of an untrue man working round on her each time she’s out of city. It’s a vicious cycle and he or she is aware of it. “You’re lyin’, I’m cryin’/we do that time after time,” she sings. In one other verse, she lays naked the cheater’s favourite ploy — “you say that your cellphone’s gonna die/you then simply go put it on silent” — in a callback to the tech methods she first shouted out in Fortunate’s “I’m Not Fairly.”

The transient however highly effective “Hell of a Present” closes the album by shining a light-weight on the ache she generally has to cover, as Moroney particulars her battle to get by means of a sold-out present after a person decimated her with meanness simply 20 minutes prior. Even together with her title up in lights, she’s destined to “cry myself to sleep” that night time.

 So, is Moroney okay? As her new report suggests, it is dependent upon the second.