Kylie Morgan – Nashville Demos
Reviewer : Montana Sullivan
Kylie Morgan’s Nashville Demos is a collection of love songs as told through a style of pop that
I wouldn’t have immediately pegged as from Oklahoma; but through listening closely, I can hear
some of the subtle (and possibly ingrained) seeds of Oklahoman upbringing.
The production of the album is fresh with its instrumentation, with snappy electric drums, pop
synths, and vocal inflictions lavishly peppered throughout some of the tracks. A couple of the
standouts to me as far as instrumentation were “Fade” and “Mayer’s in the Mailbox”, the sound
drawing me in with the pianos and open-air sparseness. Some of the songs do have that country
feel, particularly “Tomorrow Tonight” and “Wreck You”, with the guitars and occasional banjos
popping up as if hinting at her origins. “Tomorrow Tonight” shakes up the formula a bit with its
punchy drums and reverb sounds, a welcome change.
The songs themselves, as I said, are all love songs, and it’s a testament of how love songs have
endured through the ages – there are so many ways to write a love song. Morgan tends to go the
route of writing to loves lost, to varying degrees of fond remembrance. I couldn’t help but be
reminded of my English classes talking about the difference between similes and metaphors, and
I feel the songwriting really hits more of an emotional core with the metaphors (“…I only think
about you when I breathe…”) than it does with the similes (“…you’re like a bad tattoo…”) but
that may just be the grammar nerd in me talking.
Her voice is the highlight, of course. A hint of country inflection, but with the nuance of modern
pop voices, Morgan’s voice has the quality of a star, and most importantly it makes the emotion
of the songs she sings that much more prevalent. Listening is worth it even just to hear how she
communicates the stories she sings.
