Morgan Wade

Morgan Wade was feeling the urge to simplify. The Virginia-born singer-songwriter was on a roll, having exploded onto the scene with her debut album Reckless and nabbing nominations from the Academy of Country Music and the Americana Music Association as her song “Wilder Days” became a hit. At the same time, she was reaching a point of exhaustion from nonstop touring and having to deal with a barrage of intense media scrutiny. She wondered if it was all worth it.

“I had all this stuff coming up, and it was such a weird, dark time that I was going through,” says Wade. “Then I sat down with a guitar and started writing songs. They were just coming to me left and right.”

This bountiful period of creation is captured on Obsessed, Wade’s third full-length album and the follow-up to Psychopath, which arrived less than a year ago in August 2023. Produced by Wade’s touring guitarist Clint Wells with every song penned by Wade, the 14-track project pares things back to the essence of who she is as a musician, storyteller, and human. It’s Wade at her rawest and most vulnerable, the way she started out, and a convincing statement that she’s one of country music’s most distinctive talents.

“I really wanted to get back to doing what I used to do,” she says. “Just make this whatever the fuck I wanted it to be. For me, it’s a miracle record, which makes sense with where I was at mentally.”

Wade’s career taking off with Reckless was nothing short of a dream come true, the result of years of hard work. She was suddenly going all over the world and playing her music for fans in places she’d never had a chance to visit, but there were hidden costs as well. She often found herself missing home and her loved ones. She poured those feelings into several songs on Obsessed, including the album’s guitar-driven opening track “Total Control.” “I might crush your bones with the power I feel running through,” she sings in the swooning chorus.

“The whole idea of that song was like, ‘I’m out here and I love it, but I’m tired and I want to come home and I want to be with you,’” she says. “’I just want to hold you and I don’t wanna let go.’ You get home and it’s like word vomit — you’ve got so many things to talk about.”

A similar feeling courses through “2AM in London,” a ballad that expresses the singular kind of ache one might feel with an ocean separating them from home. “There’s this part of me that struggles with it,” Wade admits. “I’m also a recovering alcoholic. If you find yourself up that late, there’s generally nothing good going on. You really feel that temptation to go to a bar.”

There are also open-hearted declarations of love on Obsessed. “Moth to a Flame” notes how she used to sing about the ones who got away, but now she finds herself singing about one who stayed. The album’s title track hints at a dangerous preoccupation, but it’s also about getting to experience someone’s hidden side and falling even deeper for them. “It’s like being with that person whose family and friends don’t really know them,” Wade says. “You get to see the part of them that no one else gets to see.”

Wade puts an intriguing spin on a literary love story in the apprehensive “Juliet,” imagining one of Shakespeare’s tragic characters as being secretly in love with another woman. “Juliet don’t keep me hidden/I’m aware that I’m forbidden,” Wade sings, wrestling with the idea of societal taboos and how difficult (and liberating) it can be to embrace new feelings. “What if Romeo wasn’t who she needed?,” Wade says of the song, which she penned more than three years ago. “I’m picturing this woman stuck in an abusive relationship with this man and she’s found love with this woman. The main character is saying, ‘We can run away, I can protect you.’”

In addition to yearning for home, Wade does some clear-eyed reckoning with the past. “Department Store” looks back on the evolution of a free-spirited outcast who’s drifted far from home. “Your parents were gospel, they gave birth to rock & roll,” she sings, nodding to her own circuitous journey. “Hansel and Gretel” depicts a relationship that’s strayed way off course, never to return. Meanwhile, “Spin” and “Halloween” examine the end of relationships, opting for the unvarnished truth even when it’s less than flattering.

“There’s the line in ‘Spin’: ‘The grass ain’t greener over here, it’s all dead,’” she says. “You always think there’s something better. As you grow up, you experience a lot of heartbreak and you have to sit with it. That’s what a lot of these songs were. You have to take ownership. I look back and I’m like, you did stupid stuff and you messed up and you were not a great person to be with or be around. That’s why this album feels like a lot of growth.”

Similarly, the mournful ballad “Walked on Water” has Wade singing about costly mistakes and dawning self-awareness. “People like me, we don’t do well at sea, because I thought I walked on water,” she sings. Pop star Kesha joins Wade on the track, marking the first time that she’s featured a guest on one of her recordings. A devoted student of pop, country, and rock & roll, Wade’s fandom of Kesha goes back years. “I’ve been the biggest Kesha fan since she came on the scene — I was obsessed with her,” Wade says. “A lot of people associate Kesha with ‘Tik Tok’ and her other bangers, but she’s such a ballad singer and she’s got an insanely powerful voice. I know it’s my own song so I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but I’m like, ‘Fuck, we killed it!’”

Obsessed closes with “Deconstruction,” which imagines two people’s walls starting to crumble and worldviews shifting as they courageously open up to one another. It starts gently but quickly builds to a cathartic climax of rumbling piano and thunderous drums as Wade sings, “Where have you been?” It’s a fitting ending for a turbulent time in Wade’s life, from trying to maintain the space for recharging her batteries, to reckoning with how far she’s come, and even to the physical effects of recuperating from major surgery. She’s emerged on the other side in a much better place.

“This whole sequence of songs covering the last two years of my life has been a deconstruction for me,” Wade says. “With my mental health, with my body, with what I believe, coming to terms with who I’ve been and who I am now. It’s a total deconstruction of my life. I am a different person than I was even six months ago.”