Morgan Wade

Morgan Wade: Reckless

Though nothing else here has a chorus of comparable caliber to that of “Wilder Days”, which creditably finished mid-pack on my end-of-2021 singles list, Wade’s writing is strong throughout, and save for the odd attempt to get existential, she can put her songs over. Her vocal quality is Sheryl-Crow-with-a-twang, but comparisons could be made to any number of rockers from the marginally earlier, patiently hornier Poppy Bush Interzone (wilder days, eh): “Passionate Kisses”, “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”, hell why not “All I Want to Do Is Make Love to You”. What’s different besides improvements in birth control is that she never achieves total freedom, even for a moment. Millennial that she is, there’s always something gnawing at her mind: a red wine stain on her white dress, an awareness that everything could fall apart in a moment that she may or may not get over. Love might help. Sex might too.

Grade: B PLUS (“Wilder Days”, “Last Cigarette”, “Other Side”)

Morgan Wade: Psychopath

On a par with Reckless without the masterpiece “Wilder Days”. Its guitars and cultural references are more 20th century than I’d prefer from a recent 27 Club avoider (a country singer pedaling second-hand nostalgia, who’d’ve thought), and if her closest comp is Sheryl Crow, she has the talent to warrant aiming higher. But short of ’80s Hollywood romances as confessional realism, her desire-filled voice can sell anything, maybe even that a guy who uses “psychopath” as a term of endearment is a relationship goal. And with Julia Michaels and producer Sadler Vaden respectively, she comes up with two half-masterpieces. “Phantom Feelings” is analogous to a phantom limb, perhaps one on which “You finally got another tattoo and I didn’t even know.” “Meet Somebody” is self-explanatory—“Why the hell can’t I meet somebody?/All these people want to do is fuck someone at the party”—and not psychopathic at all.

Grade: B PLUS (“Phantom Feelings”, “Meet Somebody”, “Fall in Love with Me”)

Morgan Wade: “Phantom Feelings”

Okay, “half-masterpiece” was 50% too low. The story recalls the ending of The English Patient (the book; never saw the movie), describing a bond that persists no matter how irrevocably finished the relationship is. Her blondness is a marker of the wisdom of a very particular age—her late twenties—in a way that’s almost Swiftian (if Swift had kept maturing through her late twenties.)

Morgan Wade: Obsessed

While this has nothing epochal like “Wilder Days” or “Phantom Feelings”, she remains a stirring singer despite sometimes being happy, and it shouldn’t be beyond her to write if not epochal big gay love songs, at least ones that look forward; small gay love song “Juliet” is facing the right way, fiction or not (“Walked on Water”, “Juliet”, “2AM in London”)

Morgan Wade: The Party Is Over (Recovered)

A sort of prequel, recounting her wilder, if more closeted, days. No co-writes, so you get full doses of her writing tics and tropes—you can bet there’s at least one change of hair color. Each verse of “Let Us Down” repeats its first line at the end to put it in a different light (a trick you may recall from the magnificent “Phantom Feelings”), so that when you hear “you don’t look too happy but who am I to judge”, you brace yourself for a heavy biographical couplet. The main subject is her alcoholism, which, although it’s killing her, she in the Lou Reed tradition lets you know the thrill of. On “Candy from Strangers”, producer Clint Wells rocks the bar while Wade takes pride in someone else paying for her drinks, and I worry about her, however retrospectively. The ending, a flash-forward to a negative pregnancy test, isn’t an altogether happy one, save that she’s now made four wide-release albums (with four classic album covers) since hitting bottom. Nothing here attempts the maturity of “Wilder Days” and “Phantom Feelings”, yet this might be her most grown-up set.

Grade: A MINUS (“Candy from Strangers”, “Let Us Down”, “Parking Garage”)