Morgan Wade

• Reckless [Ladylike, 2021] A
• Psychopath [RCA, 2023] A-
• Obsessed [RCA, 2024] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Reckless [Ladylike, 2021]
Unlikely as it seems just because the claim is so extreme (but hey, where's the competition?), this is the most sexually explicit country record I've ever heard. She wants to love and she wants to fuck, on the kitchen floor if that's the way things go. The partners are multiple to an indeterminate degree, the pleasure quotient convincing and subsidiary to a passion quotient that is often subsidiary to a solace quotient. All of which seems suitable to a 27-year-old now ready to try again with someone who may be Mr. Right and may not: "You knew my skin back before I had all these tattoos/You remember me on late nights strung out on pills and booze." "Won't you bring yourself on home?" "Northern Air" implores. But if he'd prefer she'll just "drive all night to be there." A

Psychopath [RCA, 2023]
Celebrating her adolescent attraction to Sylvia Plath, her abiding admiration for Alanis Morrisette, her hard-won sobriety, and her refusal to join the 27 Club, this builder's daughter from small-town Virginia wrote or cowrote 14 well-put new Nashville love/sex songs that presage more to come and make you wonder where they'll take her professionally once she pieces the emotional details together. Exceptionally gifted and ambitious for the work in progress she remains, Wade's music exemplifies Nashville's evolution away from downhome country toward a less regional style of autobiographical pop that when you think about it has its roots in the punk and disco '70s, when big-city singer-songwriters began emigrating to a burg more amenable to their confessional aesthetic. Less given to braggadocio than the men they settle for, the gals have done a lot more with this aesthetic than the guys, few if any of whom would risk a title like "Psychopath," which turns out to be a pet name a boyfriend she's too good for has laid on her. A-

Obsessed [RCA, 2024]
As with country women Carly Pearce and Megan Moroney, you think, aha, a bunch of solid, well-turned songs about crushes gone bad—only before long you also think, well-turned OK, but where's the sass, the spunk, the laugh line about shooting up his truck? And then it dawns on you that most of the time there's a lot more sweetness than horniness to the sexuality here and soon you Google "morgan wade lesbian" and it's aha time. I know, she's merely bi if that, and I'm a professional who's supposed to know these things going in. But I'm impressed by how subtly and gradually this subtext comes clear, and by the way, not much is made of it anyway. Inspirational Verse: "There's a mini bar in my room/I asked the hotel to take it out." Or: "You were a crazy little Pisces." Or: "I wrote all the songs/About the ones that got away." Or: "I like how you move your arms/When you're feeling stressed/Watch in the mirror when you're getting dressed." A-