A solo album from Morgane Stapleton is more of a need than a want, in my very humble opinion.
Morgane had a well established singer/songwriter career of her own before she married her husband Chris Stapleton, and as most fans know, she’s been featured on background vocals for tons of songs, written plenty of others, and nowadays, she’s featured on nearly all of Chris’ music.
She was an instrumental part of Chris’ iconic 2015 Grammy-winning album Traveller that made him a household name, and top of that, she’s written for some of the biggest names in business, including Chris, Alan Jackson, Reba, and Trisha Yearwood. She was even a co-writer on Carrie Underwood’s huge 2005 single “Don’t Forget To Remember Me.”
There was only one way to hear her older music, though.
A small collection of songs live on through her old MySpace profile. Yeah, that’s how old they are. It’s listed under her maiden name “Morgane Hayes,” and under the tab titled “countrykickass.” Need I say more?
Unfortunately, the songs don’t seem to be available publicly anymore, so now would probably be the perfect opportunity to put them all out on an official record. She has the voice of an absolute angel, and I for one, think it’s about time she graces us with an entire solo album.
More recently, she co-produced her husbands incredible new studio album Higher, which is easily one of my favorite projects put out this year.
She’s actually the one who encouraged Chris to include the stunning title track, and has been trying to get him to cut it for years:
“‘Higher’ is a song that’s off the first demo session I ever did when I came and moved to town. It’s a song I wrote by myself, and it was a step or a step and a half lower at that point in time than this.
I tuned down a half step from standard to, I don’t know, I think we landed at least a step or a step and a half higher on this just because I was feeling good that day and had it because I’d been working on it.
And we haven’t recorded this song for any other album. My wife has asked for it for every album.”
She has an ear for music being an extremely talented musician in her own right, and obviously the voice of on angel, and I’m not saying I need her to do a big marketing campaign and headlining tour but, like… a few solo studio cuts, even in the form of an EP, would be a dream.
Though, I don’t know how realistic that really is, seeing as Chris also explained in a recent interview that Morgane doesn’t necessarily love being in the spotlight… and she also has five children she’s taking care of at home, too:
“Morgane doesn’t like the attention necessarily, and she does it because I do it. She likes to do it with me because I enjoy doing it.
She would be very happy staying home and doing mom stuff, and she likes music and she is very passionate about music, but some of the other things that are the work of music are not her favorite, but she’s invaluable as well, and she knows that as well, and we make sure that she knows that.”
A pipe dream right now, maybe, but I’m hopeful that one day, maybe when she doesn’t have five kids at home, she’ll consider a little venture like this.
Until that happens, though (I’m trying to speak it into existence, here), we’ll continue to enjoy her performances with Chris like this knockout of “When The Stars Come Out”:
She was of course by his side during a recent performance at the CMA Awards, where they performed the lead single from Higher, “White Horse”:
And finally, one where she takes lead vocals… “Stop Cheating On Me.”
