When Georgian Megan Moroney moved to Nashville in 2020 to pursue a music industry career, she wasn’t completely sure what that would mean. So the University of Georgia grad, who hadn’t written her first song until three years earlier in her freshman year, set what she called “baby goals” for herself. Her first was to get a publishing deal.

“I honestly thought, ‘First, I’m going to have to work at a label as their marketing person, and then maybe I’ll get discovered, and then I can write songs, and then maybe I’ll write a song, for like Miranda Lambert, and then years later, maybe, I can become my own artist,’” Moroney said from her tour bus somewhere in Montana last week. She and her band had just played Calgary, and a date in Idaho was next. This week, in between dates opening for Kenny Chesney in stadiums, she headlines The Mountain Winery in the South Bay.

Thanks to the success of her 2023 debut album, Lucky, and hit “Tennessee Orange,” the 26-year-old is one of the fastest-rising artists, not only in country but in the music industry in general, with famous fans like Olivia Rodrigo singing her praises. She quickly followed up the debut with last week’s Am I Okay?

“Fortunately, I got to skip a lot of those steps, and once I started writing songs, I kind of realized that these songs are my songs,” she said. “I’m sure I could write for another artist, but songs that I write about my life are typically so unique to me that it doesn’t really make sense for anyone else to sing them.”

Her songwriting is personal but also extremely specific. The songwriting of Taylor Swift, her favorite pop artist, is an apt comparison. So is Rodrigo, who zeroed in on a driver’s license. Megan Moroney did the same with a University of Tennessee T-shirt she was loathe to put on, being Georgia red through and through, but did so anyway for a special someone. Somewhere along the line, she picked up a nickname: the Emo Cowgirl.

“Tennessee Orange” went double-platinum, reached the top spot in country radio (impressive not only because she was still a new artist but because she’s a woman in a male-dominated industry), and received a CMT Music Award for Video of the Year. She also picked up nominations for best new artist and song of the year at other industry award shows.

Moroney grew up singing at home with her family, including three-part harmonies with her dad and brother by the time she was 12. Her dad introduced her to bands like the Eagles and taught her to appreciate quality songwriting. He and her mom put her through piano lessons and then got her a guitar at age 16. At her high school in Douglasville, Georgia, west of Atlanta, she sang with the choir, a capella group and theater troupe. She even volunteered with the special needs choir.

She said she was named “most talented” at school, but she had no starring roles, either vocally or in acting.

“I hadn’t written songs yet, or anything,” she said. “I was just a kid in chorus. … I think everyone thought my voice was damaged because it’s raspy. I don’t have a very Broadway voice…

“It was always just for fun,” she added. “I don’t think I knew anyone that was from where I was from that moved to Nashville to go be a country artist. I didn’t really think that that was a possibility, so I just assumed I was going to be an accountant. So that’s what I went to UGA for.”

Why accounting? Two reasons. First, she understood the math, unlike many others, and that it was a well-paying career. Second, it was her mom’s profession.

“Where I’m from, you kind of grow up and do what your parents do a lot of the times,” she said. “I was very accustomed to thinking that you would do what your parents do. I was like, ‘Well, it makes sense to me, so I guess this is what I was put on the earth to do.’”

Her career path changed her first year in college when her sorority booked country artist John Langston to perform at a fundraiser concert and had no money left over for an opening act. So the 19-year-old stepped up and sang a few Miranda Lambert covers. Chase Rise, another country singer, happened to be there and watched her sing. On the spot, he offered her the chance to open for him—if she could write an original song.

It worked out.

“When I sat down and wrote my first one, I was like, ‘Wait, that was so easy,’” she said. “Actually, that was a little therapeutic. When I got to play it for other people and see their reactions, just the look on their faces after I sang it, it was like, ‘This is exactly what I want to do, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I gotta figure it out.’”

She figured it out by first switching her major from accounting to music business. Then during her senior year, she got an internship at the studio of Sugarland’s Kristian Bush, who’s produced both of her albums. During this time, she didn’t tell anyone there that she was trying to become an artist.

Her parents were supportive but gave her a reality check as well, Moroney said. They offered to help her at first but not forever, and that if she could not find success in music, she would need to find other work on her own.

“They never blew smoke up my ass, saying that I can move to Nashville and become a country music star. That never came out of their mouth, because they knew how rare and lucky you have to be for all the stars to align for that to happen,” she said.

After graduating, moving to Nashville in 2020, working at the craft and building up songs with which she was proud, she went back to Bush for advice. She was ready to record demos. After looking over the lyrics, he volunteered his services.

They released her first single in 2021, and followed it up with an independently released EP, Pistol Made of Roses, in 2022. She’s wanted a collection of songs so that she could tour, which she accomplished by opening for the likes of Jamey Johnson and Warren Zeiders. One song that didn’t make it onto the EP was “Tennessee Orange,” a quirky tune set at a college football game where Megan Moroney, a diehard Georgia fan, agrees to wear Volunteer orange to support her man.

Impressed by the EP, Spotify representatives soon contacted her about adding one of her unreleased songs to an artist discovery playlist. “Tennessee Orange” was the one she sent them. The song blew up on TikTok, and soon she had her choice of major label record deals. Lucky reached the top 40 on the Billboard 200. It’s been a non-stop rise to the top ever since.

“It was a little overwhelming at first, and it can still be overwhelming at times,” Moroney said. “I have a great team around me, and I feel very grounded still. I know that my life has completely changed, but I do feel so normal still, which I think is helpful. My fans have made me very comfortable as an artist. I think that’s because I write honest and vulnerable songs where I’m not pretending to be someone that I’m not. That takes a lot of the pressure off of me as an artist. I think artists that are pretending to be someone they’re not; they also have that layer to deal with.”

And the lucky streak is continuing with Am I Okay?, which looks at her career success alongside a sometimes less successful love life. If that sounds like familiar lyric territory, Moroney acknowledged that she’s “listened to The Tortured Poets Department probably a million times.” But her other influences, as of late, include the pop-centric Benson Boone and Olivia Rodrigo, as well as Chris Stapleton, Kacey Musgraves and Lambert in the country sphere.

The album includes empowering rocker “Indifferent,” about the realization of being over an ex; the possibility of its polar opposite, “28th of June,” a piano ballad about a would-be anniversary (both songs mention June, after all); twangy tongue-in-cheek bop “Man on the Moon”; and “No Caller ID,” an ode to receiving late-night texts that was streamed more than 8 million times in its first week.

Megan Moroney said the album title is a question because she’s expecting listeners to wonder, “is she OK?” about her by the end of the album. But the album’s title track provides a twist.

“I think a lot of people are expecting that one to be a sad song, and I’m excited to see their reactions when they find out it’s actually one of the only love songs on Am I Okay?”

Moroney’s life isn’t slowing down any time soon. She said she’s already started writing songs for her next album, but touring is on tap for the rest of 2024, including a headlining U.K. and Europe stretch, followed by festivals in the fall, including her first where she’s in the top billing. She has commitments for November and December, too, though she’ll be able to go home then.

“My parents are excited, too. I haven’t been home since last Christmas, and I was only home for two days because of my touring schedule last year,” she said. “We’re all looking forward to Christmas.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.