Megan Moroney is allergic to impersonal songwriting. The country star has amassed a loyal following by writing confessional, deeply vulnerable songs, serving up her own romantic musings and mishaps for a fanbase eager to hear their own experiences reflected in their favourite music. On this third studio album, Moroney once again doesn’t hold back, chronicling the ups and downs she’s weathered since releasing the critical and commercial success Am I Okay? in 2024. “This album is the most accurate screenshot of the past year and a half of my life,” Moroney tells Apple Music. “Every single thing that I went through is written about here. And there’s no ‘oh, we wrote this because we’re just vibing’. No, I lived every single line of the album.” At 15 tracks, Cloud 9 represents a lot of life lived for the 28-year-old, who kicks off the record with its sweet and thoughtful title track, a love song that also reflects the gratitude she feels for her career. Highlights on the album include “Beautiful Things”, a tender rebuke of life’s crueler moments, and “Liars & Tigers & Bears”, on which Moroney digs into the many contradictions faced by women in the music industry. Moroney has not one but two famous friends join her on the album, with Kacey Musgraves lending a verse to the cheeky “Bells & Whistles” and Ed Sheeran joining on the rootsy heartbreaker “I Only Miss You”. Below, Moroney shares insight into several key tracks. “Beautiful Things” “The girl that wrote ‘Girl in the Mirror’ could have never written ‘Beautiful Things’, because not only am I talking to myself like the world is hard on beautiful things, I also am spreading that message. I feel qualified and I’ve gone through enough stuff to be like, ‘I know how this goes. Life sucks sometimes, and if you just keep in mind that the world is hard on beautiful things, you’ll get through it.’” “Liars & Tigers & Bears” “There’s the line that says, ‘Love everybody/Aren’t you all friends/Even the ones that we pit you against.’ That is straight-up calling out the loser behaviour of just constantly comparing successful, great women. Like, let’s just pit them all against each other. That line is just calling out the lame energy loser behaviour of that. That goes on and it’s not a secret. It’s a very matter-of-fact song. I wouldn’t even say I’m complaining in the song, it’s just like, ‘This is what it is. If you’re gonna work in this industry, you have to have really thick skin, because this is what it’s like. Buckle up.’” “Bells & Whistles” “There were two versions: one without Kacey singing the second verse and then one with her singing the second verse. I didn’t even listen to the first one they sent, the one without her. I was like, ‘We’re gonna listen to what’s gonna be,’ and then I cried. I haven’t really happy-cried too many times in my life. That’s like a dream come true for a younger me. I waited outside of her bus in 2014 to meet her. I had a knee injury and I was in a wheelchair, which is why I learned how to play guitar. And she ended up singing the second verse, which I think made the song a million times better, because it’s Kacey Musgraves.” “Who Hurt You?” “I wrote that for me. It’s one of those things where songwriting has always been an outlet for me, and there are situations that I genuinely don’t know I would have gotten through if I couldn’t write a song about it. When I wrote that song, obviously there was a lot of sadness and anger. It’s almost like, when I can turn that into a song, it no longer exists in my heart and inside of me. It now exists as this physical, tangible thing that now my fans and I can enjoy. They can relate their own stories to it, so it feels less monumental to me, because it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m not the only person that’s felt like this and had this happen, so we’re all just gonna bond together in that way, and now I don’t have to keep that pent-up anger or sadness here.’ That was really interesting. As soon as I wrote that song, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m over it.’” “Waiting on the Rain” “I consider that song pretty devastating. Like that line that’s like, ‘I’ll forget the way he laughs,’ I hate that. Like with ‘Why Johnny’, there’s a desperation to that song, whereas ‘Waiting on the Rain’ is very matter-of-fact, like, life will just go on. It ain’t the first time I’ve been wrong, we’ll make new friends, you know. There’s a sense of, ‘You know what? I am heartbroken, but not in the way that I’m begging for him back. I’m heartbroken in a way that sucks but I’m going to be fine. And I’m going to let it hurt and then I’m going to move on.’”