Morgan Wade’s road to her debut album was a winding one. The Virginia-born artist was only 26 when it was released in 2021, but the songs that make up the album reveal a depth of life experience—including heartbreak, addiction, and sobriety—typically only heard from older, more seasoned songwriters. After devoting herself in earnest to songwriting in her freshman year of college, Wade began playing shows and festivals locally and regionally, eventually landing on the radar of Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit guitarist Sadler Vaden, who co-produced Reckless with Paul Ebersold (Drivin’ N’ Cryin’, The Weeks). The resulting 10 tracks are fringe country at its finest, recalling the spitfire sass of Miranda Lambert and the hard-earned wisdom of Ashley McBryde.
On the deluxe edition of the album, which features six new tunes, Wade offers a broader glimpse of her artistry, finding her softer side on the festival-ready “Run” and doing her best take on Elvis with a spirited cover of “Suspicious Minds.” Read Wade's stories behind each track on the original album below.
“Wilder Days”
“Sadler and I co-wrote that together. And it was just the concept of meeting an older guy who has cleaned up his act a little bit. He still has that side to him, but you know that if time would have allowed it, you guys would have gotten into some trouble and been more of a Bonnie-and-Clyde-type thing. So it’s not a depressing song but more of a ‘This isn’t going to work, but it could have worked.’”
“Matches and Metaphors”
“I had drank way too much coffee that day and I remember I stayed up all night. And I was actually putting a puzzle together at two in the morning, and I don't know why I remember that. So, just a ‘late night, miss you, where are you at’ kind of song.”
“Other Side”
“We were actually recording the record and I was at my hotel. And I woke up one morning and I had that thought in my head of my boyfriend knowing me before all of this. It was like, he's the one that's been there the whole time, before I had the tattoos. He remembers me before I was sober. He's seen all of that.”
“Don’t Cry”
“I was in the studio and Paul had this track and I was like, ‘You know what? Just keep playing it on a loop.’ And I just sat down with a notebook and listened to it for an hour straight and wrote ‘Don't Cry.’ I'm thinking it was December or January, something around there, which is always a pretty difficult time for me mentally. Just the weather, the time change, everything. And then, of course, it was a good time that we put it out the following year, 2020, and that December was when it came out. For me, it was a big deal to put it out then, because it was like, ‘You know, it's been about a year since I've experienced that and I've grown from that.’ And it was just nice to reconnect with that song myself.”
“Mend”
“That's the only song on the record that I wrote before I was sober, and I've been sober for almost four years, and that was the first song Sadler had heard of mine. And Paul and Sadler were very adamant about me putting that one on the record.”
“Last Cigarette”
“It’s just that idea of, like, ‘Just one more time. I know it's bad for me. I know this is not helping me, but just one more time.’ And I feel like we do that a lot with anything in life. And then your last time's really not your last time.”
“Take Me Away”
“I picked up my guitar one day, and it was early morning. And, with the idea of being this person that can be cut off and short and keep things to myself, it's just about being vulnerable and letting somebody in.”
“Reckless”
“Sadler had the idea for ‘Reckless.’ And when we were writing it together, he was like, ‘Man, Reckless would sound like a cool album title.’ And that was about it, that's all we'd said about it. And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ And then we never brought that up again. And then, when it came time to be like, ‘All right, what are we going to call this thing?’ I was like, ‘Well, that fits it.’ And I felt like it summed up these songs, whether it was referencing me being reckless or someone else being reckless or just life in general feeling reckless sometimes. So I think that was the perfect title for that chapter of my life.”
“Northern Air”
“We wrote that one about somebody moving away, and the character being in the same place, like, ‘What's it like where you're at and what can I do to get you to come home?’”
“Met You”
“I'm a big Ernest Hemingway fan. There's a book written about him [Hemingway in Love by A.E. Hotchner] and it was just talking about how he never got over his first wife, Hadley. And he started getting fame and his books were picking up and everything good was going on for him when he was living in Paris. He ended up falling in love with another woman and leaving Hadley and breaking her heart. And there was a part where he was in Paris and he saw her years later and told her, ‘Any true thing I write, any true woman I write about, is you.’ And he just never did let go. In this book, he was older and his health wasn't great and he was still sitting there and just saying, ‘I regret that.’ And for him, it was just never over.”