Megan Moroney Explains How Her Football Song “Tennessee Orange” Changed Everything: “Easy To Market This Time Of Year”
You can’t go wrong with a football song. Of course, Megan Moroney’s first #1 hit was “Tennessee Orange,” which she released in 2022 and first went viral on TikTok, ultimately helping secure her first record deal and launched her onto the path to becoming the country superstar she is now. The song was co-written by Megan, Ben Williams, David Fanning and Paul Jenkins, she sings about falling for a guy who’s seemingly converted her into a Tennessee Volunteers fan, as she […] The post Megan Moroney Explains How Her Football Song “Tennessee Orange” Changed Everything: “Easy To Market This Time Of Year” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.


You can’t go wrong with a football song.
Of course, Megan Moroney’s first #1 hit was “Tennessee Orange,” which she released in 2022 and first went viral on TikTok, ultimately helping secure her first record deal and launched her onto the path to becoming the country superstar she is now.
The song was co-written by Megan, Ben Williams, David Fanning and Paul Jenkins, she sings about falling for a guy who’s seemingly converted her into a Tennessee Volunteers fan, as she admits she’s now wearing “Tennessee Orange for him,” and even finds herself going to games at Neyland stadium.
On top of that, seeing as she’s a diehard Georgia Bulldogs fan, he has her committing the most egregious of sins that her daddy would never approve of, like “learning the words to ol ‘Rocky Top,’” and even forgetting that she’s “always looked better in red.”
It’s a cute song that sounds even better during football season, and during a recent event, Megan told the full story behind how the song got recorded and what made her decide to put it out. She was approached by Spotify, and they needed an unfinished song, so seeing as it was right at the beginning of football season, Meg decided that was the perfect time to drop it.
She knew the massive streaming platform had a way bigger reach than she did back then, and seeing as she was still an independent artist, she said she took every possible opportunity that came her way back then:
“At this point, I’m an independent artist. I’m still just trying to get my name out and taking advantage of every opportunity. I was still playing every free, you know, guitar pull, writers round, even the ones were I knew no one would be there, but I would get reps in. So at this point, I’m still grinding, and Spotify had come up with an opportunity to put me on their ‘Fresh Finds’ program.
And for me, I was like, ‘Okay, Spotify is gonna promote this song and they have a bigger reach than I do, so I definitely need to do this.’ Because as an independent artist, you take whatever you can get. They were like, ‘So it needs to be an unfinished song, and it’s coming out September 2nd. We’re gonna record you in the studio, and it’ll be like, unfinished finds. It’ll be like all whole storytelling moment.’
And I was like, well, I’ve got this football song. It’s like the second week of football season, so maybe they’ll like this one. And then my marketing brain, I’m like, that’s easy to market this time of year anyways, it’s a song about Georgia and Tennessee football, kind of.
I released it just because Spotify asked me for a song, and I was like, this football one will probably work. And then it changed everything.”
Since that release three years ago, Megan has become one of the premiere mainstream country artists, playing sold out shows all over the country, and just last year, she won her first New Female Artist of the Year at ACM Awards.
Obviously, she’s still very young and in the early stages of her career, but has already released two very successful studio albums Lucky (2023) and Am I Okay? (2024), and it all started with a “football song” that hit at the right time and showed off her songwriting prowess and unique perspective on love. Sometimes, that’s all it takes, and it’s still one of my favorite Megan Moroney songs: