2022’s “Tennessee Orange” and 2021’s “Wonder” were shots to the sternum for country music in its current moment; it was an awkward one, where the zeitgeist was in between first-billing female superstars amidst a rapidly growing demographic pool. A relatable rasp and Nashville writing tricks brandished in pop music accessories quickly made Megan Moroney the perfect candidate to tackle some of the genre’s newest conflicts regarding how to approach its growing identity. At the advent of her second LP, Am I Okay?, the relationship continued to flourish, as ballads of all flavors and musical stylings illustrated an artist becoming proficient at modernizing Music Row’s basic storytelling outlines. If Dolly Parton’s beau was sweet-talking side-chicks in his sleep, then Moroney’s fairytale had to be interrupted by a “you up?” text in her man’s phone at some unsavory hour of the night. Her ethos felt fresh and inventive, but it still stung because it had the same ending.
Cloud 9, Moroney’s third and latest LP, never fails to hit those same marks with what’s now a trademark confidence. But, unlike her previous bouts of relationship therapy, she pulls more punches here than she actually lands. Moments of genre-bending that jolted previous projects to life now feel one-note and trite, with only a few nuggets of lyrical and sonic protein to sustain a full fifteen tracks. Sullen songs of heartache, where those pink clouds on the record cover turn grey, drag their feet despite the enthusiastic emphasis on personal progress elsewhere. The real improvements, at least artistically, feel tacked on rather than wrought over. The production is more pristine, her tobacco-laced alto is sanded down, and musical and lyrical blemishes that once gave definition and invited relatability are now touched up to a point where even warts would twinkle in the right lighting. Is it still considered artistic maturation if all your insecurities are brushed off or overcorrected in the final mix?
But those nuggets, however sparse, at least sustain the initial sharpness that the Georgia native first slashed through the mainstream with. “Medicine,” the record’s most delightfully vengeful moment, plays out like a Tammy Wynette track in Gen-Z, girly pop dressing, complete with the hilariously sadistic insinuation of a poison-laced cold dish. With the help of Sabrina Carpenter collaborator Amy Allen (one of the pens behind “Manchild”), Moroney gets playfully demeaning about her inbox graveyard on “Stupid,” where she’s picking petals over a guy who “speaks before he thinks, like most of the time.” Her bid for a stadium shaker in “Wish I Didn’t” can just as easily find airtime on the freeway barrelling toward a first date as it can in a shoulder-to-shoulder venue, where a line like “stone cold killers have guns, but I’ve got songs” will probably be safe for delivery in the hands of the right audience.
The ride is at its most enjoyable when Moroney’s got a lead foot on the gas, but she rarely takes the car out of cruise control in between those few zero-to-sixty bangers. Once she eases off the pedals, the arrangements and the songwriting mirror the journey and lean toward a more mindless coast through the countryside. In its quieter moments, Cloud 9 sticks to familiar mainroads, where the singer can glide through Ed Sheeran duets about alcohol relieving a romantic amnesia, or retreading the realization that her former Johnny Heartbreaker is bound to claim another victim with an almost sleep-inducing effortlessness. The pacing of both Moroney’s love life and her career habits gets metatextual on “Table for Two,” where she wearily mutters, “I know what you’d say, and you know what I’d wear.” The song and dance isn’t as playful or gnarly to engage in the third time around, when there’s hardly any risk of stepping on toes. At times, it’s exhaustingly repetitive.
Despite those impossibly sleek slide guitars and airbrushed pedal steels, Moroney isn’t illiterate to nuance. “Liars, Tigers & Bears” takes a pointed stance on the impossible standards she and her peers are met with, where the code of conduct tells women to “speak your mind, but not too loud, be sure of yourself, but never too proud.” Accompanied by Kacey Musgraves on “Bells and Whistles,” the two songstresses zag on the notion that traits referred to as “extra” by their fanbase are trivial additives rather than annoyances. The moments when internal and external criticisms arise stand out, at least in part, because of how flawless the environment of Cloud 9 can be. When she’s willing to let it be, Moroney’s own essence can be bigger than the spectacle of a brand she lives in.
In a recent interview with Apple Music, Moroney told Kelleigh Bannen this record “wasn’t created for any other purpose than just because I loved it,” adding that the writing process took a more streamlined approach, with only 18 songs fully fleshed out and 15 making the wide-release cut. That quote, while showcasing the talent that just one take can elicit from Moroney and her songwriters, also exposes the project’s willingness to settle for complacency. “Waiting on the Rain,” the album’s closer, even acknowledges the anxieties of that constant rinse-and-repeat of loving and leaving. Amidst Moroney’s white-hot stardom and the pomp and circumstance surrounding Cloud 9, neither seems to fluctuate as dramatically as they think they do. Five years and no solutions later, it’s hard to tell if Moroney is as interested in moving on as she claims to be.
