Alex Warren and Megan Moroney may work in different genres, but they write songs from a very similar place: by being as personal and as candid with fans as they possibly can. “I think I’m always team vulnerable, even if it’s weird,” says Moroney, sitting
in a car outside of a restaurant in Franklin, Tennessee, with Warren, who vehemently agrees.
“You have plenty of mysterious musicians you can go check out,” he adds. “But I think I look like every other white dude in a Buc-ee’s, and I don’t think I need to play that [mysterious] role.”
Warren and Moroney have made careers out of turning the highs, lows, and heartbreaks of Gen Z life into arena-filling hits, with Moroney practicing a brand of country and pop she calls “emo cowgirl,” and Warren mixing pop, rock, and folk into his own breed of hard-hitting anthems. The grief of losing a parent or uncle, early-twenties relationships, social miscues, self-doubt — nothing is off the table for these Nashville-based artists, who are enjoying talking through all that they seem to have in common. “It’s kind of crazy, our stories,” Moroney says. “We have a lot of parallels.”
It’s true. Both artists got an early-career boost thanks to social media and TikTok, had massive singles from their debut albums (her five-times-platinum “Tennessee Orange,” his record-breaking “Ordinary”) and have collaborated across genres. They both released hit albums this year: Moroney’s cleverly crafted and pink-hued Cloud 9, and Warren’s earnestly confessional Wildchild. And neither, they discover, like to listen to music in the car. “Apparently I’m a psychopath for that, but I found a fellow,” Warren says enthusiastically.
They’re also fans of each other. Warren even reached out to Moroney back in 2024, after his wife played him “Tennessee Orange.” He DM’d Moroney to rave about her music — and got no reply. “You never saw it,” he says, laughing. “What! My apologies!” Moroney exclaims. (For the record, she did eventually follow him back.) After their afternoon in Tennessee, they’ll meet back in Los Angeles for Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians live event on Oct. 23. And messages will never go unread again. “We’re so besties,” Moroney says.
Warren: Honestly, I’m getting a lot of brownie points here because my sisters are huge fans of you. They went to your show in Nashville, and when I called to let them know I was doing this, they were wearing your shirt, so thank you very much for making me look cool for them.
Moroney: Iconic. We’ll have to send them a video.
Warren: There’s so many things I can say, for starters. I remember you and I both played a Billboard show together, and you went right after I did. Everyone had a pianist with them or a band. I remember watching you get on that stage, and it was just you and a guitar. I was sitting there watching you absolutely body it. There were so many people who performed that night, but you stuck out because it was like you just kind of … I don’t want to say laid your dick on the floor, but you really went out there and you’re like, “I did this thing.”
Moroney: Y’all have to leave that. Is that allowed?
Warren: You have this uplifting persona that you embrace who you are. You’re confident in yourself. What I envy is you have this contagiousness of — I’m unapologetically myself — but also there’s this cohesiveness. You have the pink, you have the outfits, you have your personality that’s almost everywhere to the point where I know exactly who you are. When I see this background with clouds, I know it’s your project. I know it’s you. I think that it’s just such a cool world that you’ve created. Is it something you actively think about, or does it come naturally to you?
Moroney: I would say that it mostly just comes natural. I think too, it’s almost like honoring my little-girl dreams. I’ve been given this opportunity to have an arena tour: What do I want to do? And it’s like, “I want to freaking fly in a window, and I want all my guitars to be bedazzled, and I want a new outfit every single night because it’s an arena tour and I can do it.”
I’m sure a lot of people look to you as a role model. How does that make you feel?
Warren: I love it. I think that oftentimes I teeter with the idea that I share too much because I share everything, and a lot of times I’m like, “Do I want to share that?” At the end of the day, I always lean towards yes. I talk about losing my parents. I talk about my wife and everything real in my life that people don’t typically talk about. For me, specifically, when I was homeless or when I met my wife or when I lost my parents, there were these feelings of aloneness. I felt like I was alone in that feeling and I was the only one who could experience that. As I’ve made these songs and I played these shows, people will bring their dead parents to my show. They’ll put the ashes in the urn or in a bag, and they’ll bring them to my show and have me sign them. I think a lot of people would be like, “That makes me uncomfortable.” I love it.
Moroney: Wow.
Warren: I love it. But there’s a reason. You get to keep that person alive with every conversation and you have this beautiful memory. You can’t control loss, you can’t control grief, but you can control how you react to it.
Moroney: I think that’s so special, to be able to write music where people are having the same struggles and they see themselves in you and your music. They look up to you because you’re living out your dreams and you’ve gone through these things that are so hard. But you’re still persevering, and you’re making it work. I think that’s inspiring to people, and it’s definitely a special thing: Here are my deepest, darkest secrets.
Warren: Right. I’m fully always being transparent.
Moroney: Can you be brave enough to be the one who just lays it out how it is?
“A lot of times I’m like, ‘Do I want to share that?’ At the end of the day, I always lean towards yes.”
Alex Warren
Warren: If someone hates on me or my music, sadly that is me. That’s me, motherfucker. Someone’s like, “I hate this song. It’s bland, and it says nothing.” I was like, “Fuck, I wrote that song about my dead dad, asshole.”
Moroney: I feel the exact same way. I’ve read everything I could read about myself. I’m a little numb to it, but, yeah, it’s difficult to be like, “I hate this song.” That’s me. I didn’t make that up. That came straight up from me. This is not imagination. It was right here.
Warren: I struggled a lot with checking online after a performance, or Twitter right before I’d go onstage. Oftentimes, I would be looking for the stuff that wasn’t so kind to me. Obviously, it would make me feel pretty bad before getting onstage. It kind of created this environment for me to walk into a room every time and be like, “Oh, everybody hates me in here, and I get to try and win them over.” It was like this unhealthy obsession with just trying to be likable. I feel like I deal with that because I give everyone everything. I kind of share every personal detail in my life. It’s, for me, a testament of “This is what I went through, and now because of that, look at where I am today.” I almost view that as an inspirational story that I can help other people with. But I also envy the ability to have some sorts of privacy for yourself. What do you do? Have you found that balance yet?
Moroney: As far as the online stuff goes, I’ve never really felt the need to defend myself because that’s not something you can win with. I think I’ve had to learn to be less hard on myself when it comes to performances and stuff. I mean, there have been times where I’ve cried myself to sleep after performances because things didn’t go how you wanted them to go.
I don’t know if you heard, but recently for the Cloud 9 tour, I had to go onstage and cancel three songs in [on a Denver stop] because I couldn’t talk. I was so, so sick.… Twenty minutes before I got onstage, my voice was just shot. And so I was like, “Oh, this has happened to me before, but I’ll be fine.” Then nothing came out. And everyone was already there. It was horrible. I cried onstage. So I was wondering, what would you pick? Would you pick a Grammys in-ear malfunction [Warren’s in-ears weren’t working correctly during his performance at the 2026 awards], or would you rather cancel a show onstage, three songs in and cry onstage?
Warren: I’m so sorry. I would pick the Grammys. Funny enough, the Grammys and what happened that night was the best night of my life.
Moroney: Really?
Warren: It instilled confidence in me, because I always thought that people hated me. And some people do hate me. When that happened, I get back in my seat and I remember my wife is just like, “We can go.” I was like, “Everyone in this room hates me. Everyone’s making fun of me. Everyone’s talking about me. I don’t want to even see what the internet’s talking about.” And all my friends are like, “Dude, check online.” I said, “What?” And they’re like, “Check online.” I was like, “I don’t want to see that.” They go, “Trust me, check.” And I look and everyone’s like, “I know what happened. I figured out what happened, all these things.” It was the best night of my life, and it was a freak accident.
Moroney: Unfortunately, shit doesn’t go the way you want it to go every single time. I’m like, “I wish I was a fucking robot.”
Warren: It just makes you human.
“[My tour] is honoring my little girl dreams. What do I want to do? ‘I want to freaking fly in a window and all my guitars to be bedazzled.'”
Megan Moroney
Moroney: I wish this didn’t happen so bad, but it’s just out of your control.
Warren: I will never lip-sync. I will never do any of that. I will always play live music. I had canceled a show in New Zealand, and it was the worst day of my life. I was crying.
Moroney: I think we’re the same in that way. Nothing hurts me worse than feeling like I let people down who care about me. What’s cool, though, is hearing you say that the Grammys thing ended up being a positive for you. Similarly, when the Denver show happened, of course people were initially upset, but the main response was my fans giving me grace. Do you feel sometimes when you watch a video back, you’re like, “Whoa, that’s me.” Does that ever happen for you?
Warren: Yes. I’m my own worst critic. I critique everything I do, sadly, but recently, the last four or five months, I’ve gotten really confident.
Moroney: For me, it’s like an out-of-body experience.… I feel like some artists are nonstop who they are onstage, and they keep up the same vibe. Of course, it’s me and authentic, but it is an exaggerated version of myself.
Warren: The dichotomy of onstage and offstage, right? I don’t like dressing like this. I’m always in board shorts and a T-shirt. So when I hop offstage, I immediately get out of the clothes I’m wearing and I put on a bathing suit.
Moroney: A bathing suit. OK. I don’t do that.
Warren: It almost feels like a Hannah Montana moment. I was curious because you have three studio albums, right? It’s a lot of songs. What is the song that you think best describes you as a musician and your sound and your songwriting?
Moroney: One that I always go back to, which is a very basic answer, but I do think “Tennessee Orange.” It encapsulates the kind of music my fans like. It goes back to: It’s creative, and it’s honest, and there’s the hook, and it’s storytelling. I feel like at the root of all of my songs, that’s what it is. And obviously I’m a Georgia Bulldog, so it’s just very me.
Warren: I envy that song so much. The songwriting’s very creative.
Moroney: It’s hard to say things that haven’t been said already.
Warren: Or it can go into cheese world so quickly when you’re writing a love song.
Moroney: Rhyming “girl” with “world.” I’m probably guilty of that.
Warren: It was always a struggle for me to write love songs because it was just something where I wanted one so badly. I wanted to send a song to my wife and be like, “This is how I feel about you.” Whenever I hear that song, I get so jealous of the way your brain worked for that because it’s such a creative way of saying, “I chose him, and I chose this life, and I chose this person, and I love this person.”
Moroney: OK. I have a random question. If you had to get rid of one of your albums, and they’re gone forever, what would it be and why?
Warren: I have two. So you’re making me pick one or the other. I’d have to get rid of You’ll Be Alright, Kid, which has “Ordinary” and everything.
Moroney: Wow. Wow.
Warren: This new album has a song called “Wildchild.” The only reason why I would keep this album is because of that song. My only memory of music growing up was getting in the car and listening to my dad’s CDs. We would listen to John Mayer. He was obsessed with John Mayer, Train, and Coldplay, and Rascal Flatts, but John Mayer was his guy. And when my dad passed away, I got back in his car and I went to put it in drive and John Mayer’s album came on. And so when I wrote this song for my dad called “Wildchild,” I put his voice in it, and then I asked John to do a guitar solo on it.
“I critique everything I do, sadly. But recently, the last four or five months, I’ve gotten really confident.”
Alex Warren
Moroney: Iconic. So if John Mayer was your dad’s hero, who’s yours? Who’s your John Mayer? Is it John Mayer?
Warren: That’s a great question. I’m going to give you a hot take. Is it weird to say Shawn Mendes?
Moroney: That’s a perfectly great answer.
Warren: I would pick Shawn Mendes because growing up, when I would want to do music, I felt like it was unattainable. The path to get there was so impossible. You had to be plucked, and it had to be this perfect thing. Shawn made videos on the internet to post his music. And he kind of proved that it was possible, no matter who you were.
Moroney: Bangers, too, by the way.
Warren: Right, right, right. I think it was really cool to be able to be like, “Oh, I can make a video, post myself singing, and I can now become a musician.” And it’s possible.
Moroney: It seemed way harder before.
Warren: It’s crazy how many musicians now who you look at and you’re like, “Wow, that person’s great,” and they came from social media and things like that. No matter who you are and where you are, you can be a musician. I think that’s really cool.
Moroney: I see a lot of negativity that’s like, “Oh, well now you’ve got to do content as an artist.” Sometimes it’s a lot when you have a lot on your plate, but it also is quite an advantage to be able to market yourself in that way. My first song, “Wonder,” blew up on TikTok, and I released it independently. I wrote it by myself. I didn’t have a team at all. And it had a million streams.
Warren: You and I had the same story.
Moroney: I do get that it can be grueling when you’re exhausted from all the other jobs that being an artist entails. But to me, it’s kind of like, well, the option back in the day was to go and do a million radio tours.
Warren: Yes! The radio shows. I don’t know if you’ve ever done those, but you have to in country [music], right?
Moroney: I’ve done several radio shows. I didn’t do a proper radio tour, but, yeah, going around to the radio stations, playing your music. And from what I’ve heard, that sucked for artists. A lot.
“You don’t have to be one thing. You don’t have to be pop all the time. You don’t have to be super country all the time.”
Megan Moroney
Warren: Every artist should have opened up for someone that you should not have opened for. I remember I opened for one artist and I got booed off that stage so quickly.
Moroney: I would cry.
Warren: I did. Trust me, I did. But it was a college show, and everyone was drunk. And here’s this kid who’s just crying singing about his dead dad. At a certain point I was like, “Damn, I kind of fucking had it coming.” I think every musician has to play for a crowd that does not want them to be there to appreciate the crowd that has shown up for you.
I wanted to ask: You’re technically country, but I would define you as a singer-songwriter. Do you feel like you have to be country? Do you feel like you have to be something else?
Moroney: I think fortunately I’ve tried to build my fanbase in a way where they’re super loyal, and I listen to what they want. So my thing is more, what are they liking? Of course, it’s what I like because it’s coming from my brain and I have to play it every night. I feel like my fans will go on whatever ride I take them on. I feel like too, as just human beings, we have a lot of different moods. You don’t have to be one thing. You don’t have to be sad all the time. You don’t have to be pop all the time. You don’t have to be super country all the time. Whatever it is, it’s just however I was inspired is usually how it ends up working in the studio.
Warren: I love “emo cowgirl.” That’s the one thing I’ve seen so much, that you’ve coined that.
Moroney: Emotional cowgirl.
Warren: Is there someone you’re looking up to, or could be that hero for you that you’ve kind of become for your younger self?
Moroney: With my dad: Our artist that we love together is Kacey Musgraves. I had a song with her on my latest album. The full-circle moment where you’re like, “A younger me would never believe this. I know that the stars had to align to be here, but how did they align this much?” That’s why I’m always like, “God is real.” You know what I mean? Some things are coincidences, but not everything. So, yeah, I think Kacey Musgraves, and I remember hearing Same Trailer Different Park and being like, “One day, if I ever write songs, I would want it to be like this.” Because she was so … I mean, she still is obviously, but that album is so smart and clever and it’s a little bit snarky, but somehow when she sings it, it’s with a smile. I love her, and it was very full circle to have her on “Bells & Whistles.”
Warren: Sometimes I’ll stand onstage and I feel like I’m playing someone else’s show. I look at my life and it’s almost too good to be true. Not that I don’t deserve this, but there’s a part of me that’s like, “Where’s the gotcha moment?” And how do you deal with that? Do you ever have those feelings or you just always wake up in the morning and go, “I’m that bitch.”
Moroney: No, no, no. When things are so good, you’re waiting for the catch because you’re like, “Certainly I can’t be this happy forever. This much luck can’t just keep happening forever.” I have talked to my parents about it quite a bit. And my mom said something that I think of all the time. Anytime I worry that this could go away or I’m going to wake up and everyone hates me and nobody wants to come to shows anymore and nobody listens to my music, my mom said to me, “Well, Megan, if this is all it is, it will have been enough because look at what you’ve been able to do.”
Warren: That’s so great. The idea that we get to do this for even a year.
Moroney: What is one thing that you’ve learned in the industry that you wish you knew when you were baby Alex?
Warren: I thought everything had to be perfect. When I learn a song, if it’s not perfect the first go around, I’m upset with myself. For me specifically, when you play a show and it’s a sold-out arena tour, people are there to see you. You don’t need to be a thousand percent, but every single show I play it like it’s my last show and I’m so upset if something went wrong and I’m always beating myself up. I used to be so scared to get onstage, and now it’s like I can’t wait. If I’m having a bad day, I can’t wait to get on that stage because I know that they’re going to [have] my back.
Moroney: And that’s a testament to the beautiful fanbase that you have. It’s not just the songs that they’re here for, it’s for the experience, too. I feel like that’s pretty prevalent with a lot of artists — it’s more than just the songs nowadays because people want to feel connected to a thing bigger than themselves. In the best way, “Ordinary” is inescapable. So where is the strangest place you’ve heard it?
Warren: There’s been a few places. I think the weirdest one was we were on Warren Street, which is ironic, and one of my friends was getting arrested, and the cop in their car was playing “Ordinary,” which was pretty rad.
Moroney: OK. I love that answer.
Warren: What about you? What’s the weirdest place?
Moroney: I was getting laser hair removal on my entire body. I was getting zapped in places you shouldn’t be zapped. [Moroney’s 2023 single] “I’m Not Pretty” … you just hear that, and I was like, “OK.”
Warren: There you go. Hey, it’s some pep-talk music right there. So then what are you doing now? You obviously just wrapped up a leg in Europe, which is amazing. Where are you off to now?
Moroney: I have a few shows at the end of this year, just a few one-off things, no tour or anything. But I’m really just trying to live life. I need to be able to have material for my next album. So I’m really just trying to de-stimulate myself, go back into Meg-songwriter who is a lot more stripped down than Meg-arena. Megarina. I’m just chilling, hanging out with my dog, all the things. What about you?
Warre: I’m writing a book right now, which I’m really excited about.
Moroney: I’m so interested. What book?
Warren: I really love writing. My wife reads books, and so I want to write her a book.
Moroney: That’s so romantic. Wow.
Warren: I think that everyone is really interested in [my] being homeless as a kid and meeting my wife homeless and pursuing a music career [that] I would say has done somewhat OK. I’m really excited about it. It’s going to be really fun. We’re touring. Honestly, [I’m] spending most of my time with my family and hopefully starting a family.
Moroney: And surfing?
Warren: And surfing.
Moroney: I’m going to, I think, start baking. I need hobbies, so maybe I’ll just hang out with you guys.
Warren: I feel like this is the blossoming of a friendship that you didn’t even know about.
Production and Clothing credits
MORONEY styling by LINDSEY DUPUIS at THE WALL GROUP. Hair and makeup by JAEDA MARINI.
WARREN styling by AVO YERMAGYAN at THE WALL GROUP. Grooming by AIKA DANICA FLORES at THE WALL GROUP. Tailor LAUREN TAYLOR. Set design ELISE LACRET . Production by EQUATOR STUDIO. Digital Technician: JOEL MICAH DENNIS. Photographic Assistance RORY WHITE, CODY STALLINGS, KEVIN BURNSTEIN. Production Manager: MAX A. BUTLER. Motion portrait DoP BRETT ARNDT. Moroney styling assistance by LEXIE SKIPPER and ELLA RAYNES. Warren styling assistance MARY YERMAGYAN. Set design assistance NATE ZENSEN. Production Assistance BRYSON CARTER
Clothing
Cover
MORONEY Top VINTAGE. Bra CALVIN KLEIN. Skirt and shoes MIU MIU. Belts ARITZIA. Earrings – DAVID YURMAN. Cuff JENNY BIRD.
WARREN– Blazer SOSHI OTSUKI. Shirt KYLE LYK. Tie LOUIS GABRIEL NOUCHI. Pants SIMKHAI. Shoes JIMMY CHOO.
Outdoors & Airstream
MORONEY Top and Bottom by BY DYLN. Shoes FEMME LA. Earrings DAVID YURMAN. Pink ring – KENDRA SCOTT
WARREN Sweater and pants by ERL. Shirt by AMIRI. Shoes by JIMMY CHOO
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