MEGAN MORONEY: TWISTING SISTER

Megan Moroney’s one smart cookie. When the Savannah, Georgia-bred singer-songwriter watched her massive breakout “Tennessee Orange” get overshadowed by speculation over who it might be about—those Instagram likes from Morgan Wallen, displaying his own appreciation of the O. Henry-worthy songwriter/twister didn’t help—she vowed, “never again.”

While Moroney—like Loretta Lynn, Maren Morris and Mary Chapin Carpenter—writes deeply personal, highly specific songs, she wants to leave plenty of room for fans to place their own train wrecks, stubbed toes, tentative love connections, doubts, “we got this” declarations and roots—where you come from or dark hair on platinum-blonde locks. She writes songs that allow people to access their strength, courage and sense of humor as another situation blows up.

The ride-or-die University of Georgia Bulldog met Sugarland’s Kristian Bush through the school’s music-business program. Making the move to Nashville, she’d kept in touch; one thing led to another until the Grammy winner’s mentorship turned to producing. Their exceptional Pistol Made of Roses, home of the Miranda Lambert meets Maddie & Tae step off “I Love Me,” the devastating, overheard- local-gossip acoustic “Hair Salon” and the hilarious, impaling “He Made Me Do It,” started the buzz.

But the transgressive “Tennessee Orange,” about a girl Bulldog wearing some boy’s University of Tennessee Vols’ t-shirt, launched Moroney into orbit. Beyond the bidding war, Moroney’s writing is as razor-sharp as it is self-aware. Though just 25, she’s a study in contrasts beyond her years. A platinum blonde as happy in baggy combat pants and a ball cap as she is the sparkly cocktail gowns and piled-up hair, her sense of self rejects devastation because someone did her wrong.

Lucky, released on Sony Music Nashville/Columbia, further refines her plucky take on being young, available and ready to take life by the horns. Not since Taylor Swift has a young woman told the truth so cleverly and completely; “I’m Not Pretty” has a Lee Ann Womack “I’ll Think of a Reason Later” tart turn on the girl who got her guy, while “Sleep on My Side” lacerates a boy with a breathy lack of judgment— listing their differences before dropping the mic “but when the day is done / I sleep on my side / And you sleep with everyone.”

It’s not all fun and games, though. Moroney gets that novelty—like buzzy gossip —only gets you so far. She and Bush crafted an album that’s so much smarter than many of young’uns trying to find their own voices deliver. While her affinity for ’90s Shania, Reba and tourmates Brooks & Dunn colors the Telecaster-stomping good-time title track, the autobiographical wisdom of “Georgia Girl” and the ganjo-driven fish-in-the-sea “Another on the Way,” it’s the vulnerable songs where she unpacks how hard life can be that startle.

There’s a stately piano ballad that’s leaving on the verge of breaking down “Mustang or Me,” the self-doubt/bad boyfriend recognition “Girl in the Mirror” and a sorting the mysteries of hanging on in the June Carter Cash-querying “Why Johnny.” Eloquent, elegant, it’s the kind of country music that’s left behind in the splatter of glandular guitars, hip-hop rhythms and cliché-strewn minefields.

Gorgeous in that fresh, wholesome way, self-respect may be Moroney’s most fetching attribute. Human enough to move through the realities of stumbling as you go, loving the wrong people for what seems like the right reasons, she understands life is a process.

In her songs, young women from junior high school through their second or third divorce can find a friend who offers grit, honesty and a way to move on without the self-recrimination that makes learning lessons such a horror show. By the time she gets to the sexy slow, Muscle Shoals stroll “Sad Songs for Sad People,” she’s owning her stock and trade; yes, she writes sad songs, but she’s still falling in love and is actually writing a love song for someone new.