This is one of those moments where you realize Megan Moroney isn’t really a “rising country artist” anymore.
She’s just becoming a star.
TIME revealed its 2026 TIME100 Next list Wednesday, September 30, highlighting people the magazine considers some of the world’s most influential rising figures.
Actors.
Athletes.
Scientists.
Business leaders.
Musicians.
And among them:
Megan Moroney. TIME
Here’s the part that caught our attention.
She’s the only country artist on the entire list. iHeartCountry Radio
That’s a pretty significant accomplishment for somebody who was playing relatively small Nashville songwriter rooms not all that long ago.
TIME asked Canadian pop star Tate McRae to write Megan’s profile.
And Tate came up with a pretty great description of what Megan does for a living.
She joked that Megan has somehow figured out how to turn terrible men into extremely successful songs. TIME
That’s funny.
It’s also not entirely wrong.
Heartbreak has essentially become Megan’s raw material.
Bad relationships.
Mixed signals.
Ex-boyfriends.
Guys who should’ve known better.
Megan takes all of that, writes it down, adds a melody and somehow gets thousands of people screaming the words back at her.
But Tate also pointed toward something more important.
The songs work because Megan is a storyteller.
She writes in a way that makes listeners feel like they’re getting the entire messy story rather than the cleaned-up version.
That’s been there from the beginning.
“Tennessee Orange.”
“I’m Not Pretty.”
“No Caller ID.”
“Am I Okay?”
The songs feel conversational.
Like somebody telling you what happened over drinks rather than delivering a carefully polished celebrity statement.
That connection has gotten considerably larger over the last few years.
Megan’s 2024 album Am I Okay? debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 and eventually produced multiple country hits.
Then came Cloud 9 in 2026, and her career moved into another gear.
The interesting thing is that Megan’s rise hasn’t required her to stop sounding like a Nashville songwriter.
That’s probably why the TIME recognition matters.
This isn’t simply another country award.
It’s recognition outside the country-music bubble.
And Megan is sharing the TIME100 Next list with rising names from all kinds of fields and music genres, including RAYE, Sombr, Conan Gray, PinkPantheress, Alex Warren and Troye Sivan. InMusic
That’s a very different neighborhood from the CMA Awards.
And it says something about where country music sits culturally right now.
A few years ago, it wasn’t unusual for major mainstream entertainment outlets to treat country like its own separate universe.
Now some of country’s younger stars are simply part of the broader pop-culture conversation.
Lainey Wilson.
Ella Langley.
Megan Moroney.
Zach Top.
They’re not necessarily trying to become pop artists.
They’re bringing country music with them.
Megan is 28.
Her first major hit isn’t even five years old yet.
And TIME now considers her one of the rising people shaping culture.
Not bad for somebody whose greatest professional skill may be meeting the wrong guy and remembering exactly what he said.
