Megan Moroney - Am I Okay?

Megan Moroney holds the kind of place in country music that Bridget Jones’ Diary, the Barbie movie and bottles of rosé hold in pop culture at large. Men might enjoy it, but ostensibly this is something that's been created by a woman, for women and about women.

Her songs capture all the best and worst bits about being in love in the same way that Nora Ephron films or Dolly Alderton books do. Unflinchingly honest, often hilarious and delightfully self-deprecating. Heartbreak might not be gendered, but when Megan Moroney sings about it, it always feels like she's singing about a distinctly female experience of it.

So, when I was thinking about Moroney’s new album, I couldn't help but wonder… If Am I Okay? was a season of Sex and the City, which season would it be?

By the sounds of it, we’d be very much in season three. The album begins with Moroney playing Carrie as she finally finds herself in a healthy relationship with a stand up "6’2” dream" guy like Aidan (although John Corbett, who plays Aidan, is actually 6’4”) who buys her flowers and “says what he means and he means what he says”. She’s moved on from her commitment phobic, emotionally unavailable on-and-off-again ex-boyfriend at last and things couldn’t be going any better for her.

“Maybe love ain’t always what it was / Not crying and dying and messing me up,” she sings in the chorus to the title track. “I think I’m really happy / I think I want to stay.” But then that doubt sets in, the fear that she’s not good enough for this, for him, that she doesn’t “deserve” to be happy or prioritised in a relationship: “Oh my God, am I okay?”

Just like in the third season of Sex and the City, though, the healthy, happy relationship doesn’t last long. As with Aidan and Carrie, it seems that the calm that Moroney had finally found was always destined to become a storm. We only really have two songs where she's laying contentedly in his arms (presumably in his little “nook”), scared to let him go and praying that it’ll work out this time.

It doesn’t, of course. The bad boy always rides back round again, in his chauffeured limousine. That noncommittal, narcissistic good-for-nothing ex of hers starts leaving shady voicemails and sliding back into her DMs again because he can’t handle that she might be happy with someone else.

It's here she finds herself back in more familiar territory. ‘No Caller ID,’ ‘28th of June,’ ‘Man On the Moon’ and ‘Indifferent’ are all classic Megan Moroney post break up anthems; hard relatable romantic tragi-comedies delivered with her distinctive down-to-earth humour and raspy conversational charm.

Producer and collaborator Kristian Bush adds a touch of Olivia Rodrigo’s chunky punk pop to songs like ‘Indifferent,’ Miss Universe’ and the title track, but mostly it’s the same contemporary take on classic country that they’d already perfected with Lucky.

Just like in Sex and the City though, Am I Okay? isn’t really about the hook ups, break-ups and relationships that women have with men. It's about the friendships they have with each other, that never go out of style. Ladies who brunch, bring over wine and don’t mind if you tell the same stories about the same shitty guys over and over again.

Boyfriends come and go, even the good ones, but friends are always there for the hard parts, through thick and thin, to hand you a cosmopolitan and hold your hair back when you’re throwing up, and ‘The Girls’ is Moroney’s own loving tribute to the female friendships in her life.

Much like Picasso when he was in his, as Megan Moroney seemingly enters her Blue Period, themes of loneliness and sadness almost overwhelm her work. The album ends with an intimately raw home recording of ‘Hell of a Show’ as Moroney finds herself back where she always seems to end up: heartbroken and standing in front of someone, pouring her heart out and asking them to love her.

And just like that… Megan Moroney has made one of the best country albums of the year. She seems more than okay to us.

9/10

Megan Moroney's 2024 project, Am I Okay?, is available everywhere now via Columbia Nashville.

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