The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville is known for a big red barn behind the stage. This past Tuesday night it glowed pink instead.
That was the Opry Goes Pink show on Oct 27, a night raising money for breast cancer research with Susan G. Komen. Megan Moroney, a young country singer from Georgia who’s become one of the brightest new names in the genre, headlined the evening. She’s had a fast rise over the last few years, with radio hits and a big young following. The Opry’s host, Kelly Sutton, had invited her to flip the switch that turns the famous barn backdrop from red to pink, and Megan did the honors.
Before she sang a note, she stopped to tell the crowd a story.
She told the crowd the very first song she ever learned to play on guitar. Then she said the woman who made that song a hit was in the building, and she asked her to come out and join her.
The song was “Strawberry Wine.” And out walked Deana Carter.
Deana Carter is the singer who turned “Strawberry Wine” into a No. 1 country hit back in 1996. It went on to win Song of the Year at the CMA Awards in 1997, and it’s one of those tunes that just about everybody over a certain age can sing the first line of. For a young Megan, it was the song that taught her fingers where to go.
Carter came out and sang it, along with her other hit “We Danced Anyway.” Two generations of country women on one pink-lit stage.
If you’ve never heard the song that started it all for Megan, here’s Deana Carter’s own video from 1996.
Deana Carter singing her 1996 hit “Strawberry Wine”
Megan went on to play a full set of her own songs, including “Cloud 9,” “Hair Salon” and “Wedding Dress,” plus a duet called “Nothin’ Crazy” with fellow singer Mackenzie Carpenter. After she sang “Medicine,” she grinned at the room and said, “Y’all are feeling sassy tonight. It must be all the pink.” Singer Mandy Barnett closed out the evening.
This wasn’t the first time Megan has sung “Strawberry Wine” in public, either. A few years back she covered it onstage, long before she ever got to share a microphone with the woman who recorded it.
Here she is doing it in 2022, well before that Opry night.
Megan Moroney covering “Strawberry Wine” live in 2022
No camera caught the full moment from Tuesday for the rest of us to see, so the pictures going around came from the Opry’s own cameras and from the artists themselves. But the people in the room got to watch a rising star meet the singer behind her very first guitar song, and hear the two of them share it.