Megan Moroney has a lot of fans, but perhaps none as big as Kenny Chesney. The future Country Music Hall of Fame member invited Moroney to join him as part of his Live at Sphere Las Vegas residency, later praising Moroney for her performance.
“No one has more fun onstage than Megan Moroney,” Chesney says. “She doesn’t just radiate joy up there, she makes everybody want to experience the amount of fun she is clearly having. Even I want to – and don’t always – maintain that level of feeling good. She just brings it.”
Moroney performed her current Top 5 single, “Am I Okay?” plus “All The Pretty Girls” and “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” the latter two with Chesney, which they sang together on his Sun Goes Down Tour. They also sang “You Had To Be There,” their current duet, a song Moroney wrote as a thank-you gift to Chesney.
Chesney also praised Moroney on social media after their performance.
“You Had To Be There last night at Sphere in Vegas,” Chesney writes. “[Moroney] and I sang our song for the first time live. It felt amazing to share the stage with her again. Thank you Megan for being there. You lit up the room. Love you.”
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Chesney has had plenty of artists open for him over the years. But with Moroney, he found not only a talented singer, but a lifelong friend as well.
“It was just little by little, every week,” Chesney says of their friendship. “Megan, along with her whole road crew, we just became really great friends. And you never know if that’s going to happen or not. So when you hear someone that went out on the road with you, that cared so much about it, and cared so much about the experience, and what it meant to them to be up there on stage. But the thing about Megan and her crew, after she got off stage and before she was onstage, they were all on the side of the stage, soaking it all in.”
Moroney was understandably nervous to play the song for Chesney. Fortunately, her fears were unfounded.
“We played it like eight times in a row.,” Chesney remembers. “And I couldn’t believe it, because it was a true postcard, if you will, of everything we experienced on the road. The ups, the downs, the Miami trip, all of it. And the thing about it is, I didn’t know Megan when we first started on the road. I went to breakfast one time with her. I felt like, if I’m gonna be on the road with Megan all summer, I need to meet her before the first show. We met, and that was like in February, and I didn’t see her again until April.”
For a man who can buy anything he wants, the gift of “You Had To Be There” is one he will cherish for a lifetime.
“To care about the friendship that much, to sit down and give me a piece of their heart and a piece of their soul, that we, in turn, together, get to give the world. I think that’s a very special thing,” Chesney says. “And as far as I know, nobody has ever written a song for me, and if that’s true, I’m really glad that ‘You Had To Be There’ is the first one. I absolutely love it.”
Chesney was just named Billboard‘s Top Country Artist of the 21st Century.Find all of his remaining Vegas shows at KennyChesney.com.
Photo Credit: Alive Coverage