“When I write songs, I send my mom a little work tape from my phone.”
Megan Moroney shared that habit with Southern Living editor Sid Evans this year. That is a humble habit for someone having the year she is having. Her album “Cloud 9” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in February. Next Wednesday, Nov. 18, she is up for Female Vocalist of the Year at the CMA Awards, against Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Kacey Musgraves and Lainey Wilson.
On Friday, Nov. 6, she also put out a new song, “You for Me (Smoky Mountain Demo).” She wrote it with Jessie Jo Dillon, Connie Harrington and Jessi Alexander, and it is a quiet one, mostly her voice and a guitar. Fans in Nashville first heard it at her show on Aug. 21. Holler reported that she warned the crowd, “I wrote the second verse yesterday, so, hopefully I remember the words.”
The title points straight at the Smoky Mountains on the Tennessee line. That is a lot of Tennessee for a Georgia girl, and her mom has had opinions about that before.
Megan was born in Savannah, where her parents live today. She grew up in Douglasville, west of Atlanta. She went to the University of Georgia, starting out in accounting before music won. “I’m a Georgia girl and I went to UGA,” she told Country Now. The Georgia Bulldogs wear red. Their rival up the road in Knoxville wears bright orange.
After college she moved to Nashville. “When I moved to Nashville, one day, I found myself wearing a Volunteers shirt,” she told Seth Meyers on “Late Night” in October 2025. The Volunteers are the University of Tennessee. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought about home. “My mother would be very disappointed in me right now,” she told ABC Audio in 2023.
That moment became “Tennessee Orange,” a love song about a Georgia girl who likes a boy enough to wear his team’s color. She wrote it with Ben Williams, David Fanning and Paul Jenkins. It took off online in 2022, and by June 2023 it was No. 1 on the country radio chart.
Megan tells Seth Meyers how “Tennessee Orange” started
Megan tells Seth about the shirt and the mirror in this official “Late Night” clip.
So what did her mom say when the work tape for “Tennessee Orange” landed on her phone?
Megan told Southern Living that her mom doesn’t start with a music review. “The first thing she says back is not ‘Oh, I like the song,’ or ‘I don’t really like it,'” Megan said. With this one, her mom went straight to the facts of the story.
“She’s like, ‘Don’t tell me this is true…don’t tell me you’re wearing Tennessee orange.'”
Megan had a comeback ready. “At least it’s not Florida orange!”
Any Georgia fan will get the joke. The Florida Gators wear orange too, and Georgia and Florida meet each fall in Jacksonville in one of the South’s great football grudges. By Megan’s math, Tennessee orange was the lesser sin.
The “Tennessee Orange” video, orange cap and all
The official video is filmed from the point of view of the boy, who never shows his face. Watch for the moment he puts a Tennessee cap on her head.
Listen to her new song, “You for Me (Smoky Mountain Demo)”
This is the official audio of the song she released on Nov. 6.
The CMA Awards air next Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, with Lainey Wilson as host. Megan is also up for Song of the Year as one of the writers of “Beautiful Things,” which she wrote with the same three women behind “You for Me.”