BETHLEHEM, Pa. — There's no question Taylor Swift forged the path for young female country music singers to succeed, and even to grow beyond the genre.
Megan Moroney, the Academy of Country Music New Female Artist of the Year who headlined Preview Night on Musikfest's main Steel Stage on Thursday, owes a lot to Swift.
There were a lot of times in Moroney's 22-song, 91-minute show that she sounded like Swift — meaning her music and message, not her singing. Moroney's a better singer (more about that later).
For starters, a lot of Moroney's songs are — as with Swift — about boys and broken relationships.
As evidence, the early "Noah" and the very good 2023 platinum hit "I'm Not Pretty," on which she puts the blame squarely on the guy (a la Swift).
And especially, later in the show, on "Bless Your Heart." One of the night's best, it was Moroney's version of Swift's "Mean" — a list of relationship complaints down to the song's structure.
(She introduced it by saying it was for "her haters," who say "all she sings about is breakups." Well, duh.)
But while Moroney has clearly walked through that door Swift opened, she takes it several steps further.
Rocking, a shot and saltiness
More like pop singer Sabrina Carpenter, Moroney is not afraid to drop a dash of sensuality into her performance.
She opened the show with "Man on the Moon," prancing about the stage in a short, frilly blue party dress and, at the end, shaking her posterior.
(She noted the many in the sold-out, 6,500-person crowd of almost exclusively young females wore similar attire. "Looks like we're all in a cult that I'm happy to be part of," she said.
They all likely were cold, too, with temperatures dipping into the 60s and drizzle, though thankfully not the predicted downpours.)
Moroney isn't afraid to rock, either, as she did with her five-man backing band on the good "Indifferent."
"No Caller ID," her platinum hit from last year, with her on acoustic guitar was very much like Swift, but Moroney didn't hand out blame, and acknowledged its rants by telling the crowd, "Welcome to group therapy" — something Swift never does.
And Moroney's not afraid to be salty. Mid-show, on the slower and good "Girl in the Mirror," which she said was her favorite song she's written, Moroney — alone, playing guitar — sang, "the girl in the mirror/has lost her damn mind."
On "Sleep on My Side," she sang, "I sleep on my side/And you sleep with everyone."
OK, Moroney's 27, but Swift is 35 and still not singing songs like that.
Moroney also drank a shot on "Lucky," with its lyrics "Lucky I'm drinking."
Hits, and finding gusto
Like Swift, Moroney doesn't have a classically good voice. But hers carries emotion that Swift's doesn't.
It came out on the early "I Know You," and especially on the very good "Third Time's a Charm," when the rasp in her voice sounded especially authentic.
That authenticity connects Moroney to an earlier wave of female country — the 1990s runs of Jo Dee Messina, Shania Twain, Martina McBride and Sarah Evans.
That connection was evident in the later offering "Hell of a Show," with such lyrics as "he's so damn good to me."
And on "Mama I Lied," another tale of broken romance, but this one in the classic country vein of taking the blame.
Moroney's setlist reached back (a relative term; she's been recording just four years and has only two albums) to her first single, 2021's "Wonder," which holds up well.
In fact, Moroney played nearly all the songs from her most recent album, last year's "Am I Okay?" and more than half of those on 2023's "Lucky."
Her closing run were her biggest hits, starting with the new single "6 Months Later," perhaps her best, as she danced around the stage with abandon, unlike the heavy choreography most seen these days.
The crowd sang along loudly to every word — of course, they did that all night, even on much deeper cuts such as "Hair Salon" early in the show.
She followed that with "The Girls," then her first hit, the triple-platinum "Tennessee Orange" from 2022 — also a positive love song.
And she closed with last year's platinum "Am I Okay?"
But perhaps the song that set Moroney apart most was a late-show cover of the late Toby Keith's "Who's Your Daddy," which she had enough gusto to pull off.
There's no way Taylor Swift or Sabrina Carpenter could do that.
