“I Gained So Much Confidence”: Megan Moroney Heartwarmingly Shares How Kenny Chesney Helped Her While On Tour Together

During a new interview with Audacy's Katie & Company, Megan Moroney has delved into the creation of her highly anticipated new album and her friendship with Kenny Chesney.

The Georgia native kicked off the rollout for her keenly awaited third studio album in May, when she dropped the uplifting, galvanising duet with Chesney, ‘You Had To Be There’.

It finds Megan Moroney looking nostalgically back at the time she bought tickets to see Kenny Chesney perform back in 2018, before flash-forwarding to getting to perform alongside him as part of Chesney's hugely popular 2024 Sun Goes Down Tour.

Since joining forces during that run of shows, Megan Moroney and Kenny Chesney have endearingly become good friends, with the former explaining to Audacy how Chesney's beloved US Virgin Islands - which have long been a key muse for him - are like a sanctuary, "I feel like I exhale when I get there and it's very, very peaceful”.

She recalled how ‘You Had To Be There’ came about, “I wrote that song about the Sun Goes Down Tour. I obviously opened for him last summer and I write about things that are important to me. I do feel like I learned so much on that tour. I gained so much confidence, I got so many tips from him. It was just a pivotal point in my career, but also the best time of my life so I needed to write a song about it”.

The ‘Tennessee Orange’ hitmaker went on, “I had the title, ‘You Had To Be There’, and I was down with my writers in Panama City. It was me, Mackenzie Carpenter, Micah Carpenter and Ben Williams. We were on the beach and we were like, 'Let's try to write the Kenny song.' We literally had the guitar down on the beach and Micah started playing this guitar lick that you hear at the beginning of the song, and I'm like, 'Well, that's it!' We wrote the song in about 45 minutes”.

The song movingly covers Megan Moroney's evolution from being an aspiring, up-and-coming country artist, to then sharing the stage with one of the genre's biggest names.

The ‘Am I Okay?’ chart-topper warmly reflected, “I think the coolest thing to me is that...in 2018 I bought nosebleed seats when I was in college to go see Kenny at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It was one of the first shows they had there, I was at sophomore college. I literally looked at my email the other day and I still have the tickets. I was section 312, Row 20. It was the Trip Around the Sun Tour, so the song starts where I'm in college...Then by the second verse...I'm on tour with him”.

It feels apt, in a way, that Moroney saw Chesney on his Trip Around The Sun run, with that song conveying how quickly life can change, but that, at the end of the day, all we can do is hold on for dear life and try to embrace the rollercoaster ride.

Moroney then outlined how, initially, it wasn't the plan to ask Chesney to feature on ‘You Had To Be There’, but it was simply intended as a present, “We wrote the song, I really liked the song. I didn't know what to get Kenny for Christmas because how do you buy a gift for Kenny Chesney...Impossible, really. For example, the end of tour gift that I got him was a scrapbook that I handmade. It's very intricate, I'll have to post about it sometime so everyone can see it”.

The ‘Bless Your Heart’ prodigy shared the sweet message she delivered to Chesney before playing the song, “I knew I was going to the island at the top of the year. We went straight from Dick Clark's New Years Eve to the island, so I wrote out the lyrics on a piece of paper and I had the demo with me. I played it for him down in the islands and I prefaced it with like, ‘I'm not asking you to be on this song. If you don't like it, I literally just want you to know I appreciate you taking me on tour and it was like the best time of my life. I write about things that I care about and this is something that I really cared about and I want you to know that’”.

Moroney concluded, “He ended up up loving it and now it is what it is. It was his Christmas gift...It just feels authentic. Me and Kenny knew for a while that we wanted to do a song together but, like, what makes sense for us to sing together? It just turned out so authentic and I think it's the perfect representation of what that summer was and how magical it was and how much of a mentor he is for me”.

We hope this isn't the last time we get to hear Megan Moroney and Kenny Chesney teaming up on a song, with their lovely friendship permeating throughout the track. The duo joined forces again to perform the energising track at Chesney's star-studded, electric Sphere Las Vegas residency, which continues this weekend.

Moroney has confirmed ‘You Had To Be There’ will appear on her forthcoming album, and while chatting to Audacy, shed some light on the new project. Fans are eagerly looking forward to hearing her viral new song, ‘Six Months Later’, which is expected to drop on June 20th, although there's been no announcement yet.

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