Celebrity Connection: Megan Moroney went from singing in sorority halls to selling out arenas, but she hasn’t lost her Southern grounding

Story by Alea Wilkins

Megan Moroney bought a ticket to the Atlanta stop of Kenny Chesney’s Trip Around The Sun Tour in 2018. Seven years later, she released a song with him about it.

“That is still crazy to me. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” the 27-year-old said. 

Their duet, “You Had To Be There,” looks back on that night and everything that’s followed for Moroney: a meteoric rise that’s included headlining iconic venues and selling out dates across the country. She earned “best new artist” honors from both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association and landed the cover of Rolling Stone’s April 2025 “Future of Music” issue. But beneath the glitz, glamor and what she jokingly called “10 pounds of extensions,” Moroney remains a down-to-earth Georgia girl. 

A star Is born

Born in Savannah and raised in Douglasville, Moroney got her first guitar from her father after a breakup. The then-teenager, heartbroken in a way she described as “dramatic, horrible, wouldn’t stop crying — you know the drill” could only be cheered up by a Taylor six-string. She grew up playing the instrument with her dad and brother, and she told Nashville Lifestyles Magazine in July 2024 that she has been singing as long as she can remember.

A devout Dawgs fan, Moroney started at the University of Georgia in 2016 as an accounting major. Though passionate about music, she’d never considered it as a career. “I don’t think it ever clicked in my head that this would be possible,” she told Rolling Stone. She rushed Kappa Delta her freshman year and grew a following online by posting about her Instagrammable college life, interspersing videos of her singing between beach pics and Dormify brand deals. When her sorority needed a last-minute opener for its charity show, Moroney took to the stage. The unexpected special guest? Singer Chase Rice in the audience, who, delighted with her performance, invited her to open for him. He told Taste of Country in October 2024, “I watched her play and was like, ‘Man, this girl’s good.’”

After ditching the calculators for curtain calls and interning with Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, Moroney took off to Nashville in 2020. She had her first songwriting sessions over Zoom, and two years later she released her debut EP Pistol Made of Roses as an independent artist. Recognition from Spotify’s Fresh Finds program led to the recording of “Tennessee Orange,” a waltzing love song about falling for a fan of a rival football team. Moroney thought its release would pick up traction with the upcoming season and hopefully earn some new listeners. Within five days it amassed over 1 million streams and caught the attention of Sony Music Nashville. “Releasing ‘Tennessee Orange’ changed my life,” she said to Spotify in June. 

Since then, she’s released two albums earning five RIAA certifications, accrued nearly 11 million monthly listeners on Spotify and headlined four tours, each growing in scale and spectacle. Her current tour began in March in support of her hit 2024 album Am I Okay?, parading her batch of breakup anthems and blue sparkles around North America for the grand finale in Dallas this October.

Homecoming queen

In late May Moroney returned to Savannah to put on a “hell of a show.” Her two-night stretch sold out Enmarket Arena, welcoming over 14,000 attendees from north of the Great Smoky Mountains to the southernmost point of Florida. The singer’s family and friends sat in the crowd, watching as she declared from center stage, “I’m so so happy to be back home.”

Amongst the fanfare — including a photo-op with a cobalt Posh Cart that she later bought — the quieter moments spoke loudest of her character. Yasmeen Badich, vice president of marketing for the arena, recalled how the star reached out to a young fan who missed the show to receive cancer treatment. “[Moroney] FaceTimed her in the hospital to check on her and bring her spirits up,” Badich says. “It was very sweet and made the little girl’s whole day — maybe year.”

For an extra sweet gesture, Moroney also treated 100 fans per night to mini cups of Ben & Jerry’s — the blue-tinted Marshmallow Sky flavor — after the show. She extends her gratitude for her supporters whenever she can, and Georgia is especially meaningful. “Those are my people I’m back with. I look out and recognize faces,” she says. “Those shows are special.”

It’s Moroney’s ability to connect with her audience that’s most indicative of her modern star power. Whether through her gut-punching lyrics as the self-appointed “emo cowgirl” — a nickname representing her penchant for writing sad songs — or responding to her fans’ comments online, she is, as Rolling Stone crowned her, “the Gen-Z country queen we need.” 

Combining the genre’s storytelling traditions with markers of the current age (like being the victim of social media hate-stalking on 2023 single “I’m Not Pretty”), Moroney’s words speak to the next generation of country listeners. Sung with her smoky rasp, the songs sound refreshingly authentic. She cites the places she grew up as a major source of inspiration for her music, notably in songs like “Georgia Girl” and her early viral success, “Hair Salon.” 

“I’m really honest about how things happened in my life or at least how I thought happened through my point of view,” she said. “Growing up in a town where ‘Hair Salon’ could really happen, I think it’s just spilled over into my songwriting.” 

Though she admits the song was inspired by a dream (“but Bernadette is real”), the specificity of her words is what keeps her fans entranced. She’s still amazed by how her fans have memorized every song, how the experiences behind them can feel so personal and turn out to be universal. “You think, maybe no one will understand this song, and then everyone does,” she says.

She’ll be fine

Since her return to Savannah, she’s dropped new single “6 Months Later,” performed at two music festivals and added a T-shirt cannon to her tour arsenal. She’s taken some time off in the Bahamas — but not too much. (She uploaded a video of herself in the recording studio while wearing a beach towel.) She continues to bring the Am I Okay? Tour to arenas filled with adoring fans, dazzling new ones along the way, and she still finds herself starstruck when she opens her phone to messages from Chesney. “That’s been one of the coolest parts of my career so far,” she says of their friendship. “I grew up listening to Kenny Chesney. I bought nosebleeds back in 2018, so to have a song with him is definitely a dream come true.”

Reflecting on her journey from excited fan to friend of the singer, she hopes it inspires others to take a chance on their own dreams. Before she wrote her first song, a night that began as “summer money well spent” turned into sold-out shows with her name on the marquee. She still can’t believe it. “It’s still something that I’m not sure I completely processed,” she says, “but I’m very grateful.”

Boots, breakups & breakthroughs

Megan Moroney’s music keeps getting deeper and sharper. Here’s how each release struck a chord with fans and critics alike.