If not for Chase Rice, country music might not have a Megan Moroney. Moroney reveals that it was Rice who gave her the push she needed in country music, although neither of them were aware of the impact he would have at the time.
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While still in college at the University of Georgia, Moroney's sorority hired Jon Langston to sing in a philanthropy event for her Kappa Delta sorority. Hiring Langston took their entire budget, so Moroney agreed to open for him, for free. Fortuitously, Rice was in the audience, and immediately invited Moroney to open for him -- with one caveat.
"He was like, 'Why don't you open for me next month?'"Moroney recalls to Glamour. "He was like, 'The only thing is that you have to write a song.'"
Moroney had at the time not written a song, but she accepted the challenge, and her love of songwriting, and singing her songs live, was born.
"I was like, Well, this is what I'm going to do with my life,'" she remembers thinking. "I don't know how I'm going to figure it out, but I will."
Moroney didn't immediately drop out of college. She got her degree, and then moved to Nashville in 2020. But even then, Moroney had no plans of becoming the artist she is now.
"I wasn't like, I'm going to be this country music superstar," Moroney reveals. "My brain just never went there. It was just like, I know that my plan after college is to move to Nashville."
Megan Moroney's Debut Single, "Tennessee Orange"
It might have been Rice who encouraged Moroney to write songs, but the talent is all her own. Her 2022 debut single, "Tennessee Orange," became a multi-platinum, No. 1 hit for Moroney, kicking off a career that is still going strong three years later.
"You don't know when things are going to happen," Moroney concedes. "You don't know why people gravitate toward certain things. I would've never predicted 'Tennessee Orange' to be the song."
The song, rumored to be about Morgan Wallen, showed Moroney that her fans resonated with lyrics about her own life.
"My fans, as long as I'm being honest and I'm writing about real stuff and I'm doing what I've done in the past, I think they're going to like it," she says.
