John Morgan Talks Balancing Hits, Heartfelt Songwriting & ‘Giving People Different Tastes of What I Love’ on ‘Carolina Blue’

North Carolina native John Morgan currently has a Billboard Country Airplay top 10 hit with his Jason Aldean collaboration “Friends Like That,” and is gearing up for his debut album, Carolina Blue, out April 25.

But in a true “only in Nashville” kind of moment, both of those milestones came courtesy of not only innate talent and ambition — but also one propitious Uber ride, when a conversation about songwriting led to Morgan sharing his contact information with the driver. At first, nothing came of the incident, but months later, the two had another chance meeting in Music City. The driver passed Morgan’s music onto his buddies, who happened to be longtime Jason Aldean collaborators/bandmates Tully Kennedy and Kurt Allison. Morgan began co-writing with them, and soon got a call from Aldean himself.

“He was just like, ‘I really dig what you’re writing. I like your style,’” Morgan recalls of the conversation. “It was the fact that he saw me not only as a writer, or just a track guy, but he saw me as an artist. He’d never seen my show or anything, just heard the demos and the songs.”

Carolina Blue will release on Aldean’s Night Train Records, his imprint with BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville, while Aldean also signed Morgan to a publishing deal with Triple Play Music, the publishing company Aldean launched with Allison and Kennedy.

Beyond “Friends Like That,” other highlights on the album include the ode to his Carolina roots in the title track, as well as a mix vulnerable songs and up-tempo grooves including the rural anthem “Long Ride Home,” “One More Sunset,” and the breezy, romantic “I Know Better,” and the introspective “Kid Myself.” Strains of his myriad influences, from bluegrass to John Mayer’s guitar work, can be heard throughout.

Morgan’s musical roots began to take shape when he started taking piano lessons alongside his uncle and two cousins. “Two of us hated piano, so I switched to guitar and my cousin switched to banjo, and we just started jamming together,” Morgan recalls. Those jam sessions evolved — and by 10 years old, he was steadily playing local gigs and bluegrass festivals as part of the family bluegrass band.

“I did that circuit for about 10 years. It was a big part of my life and childhood, middle school through high school,” Morgan says. “It’s funny, I met [fellow country artist] Zach Top through that, at the Darrington Bluegrass Festival]. He was playing mandolin in his own family band.”

That time in the bluegrass music scene served as a catalyst for Morgan to craft his own songs.

“Having been doing traditional bluegrass for so long, you’re playing the same song as everybody else is playing, every version. I was like, ‘I got something to say. I want to write my own stuff.’ And that’s when I really chased that, for sure,” he says.

For a time, he gave up his musical ambitions and planned to work at his father’s property management business in North Carolina. He purchased property and was fixing up an old house on the land when a moment of realization shifted his perspective: “It just hit me out of nowhere, like, ‘Man, I’m not happy. I got everything going [on] outside and it looks great, but I knew music was missing in my life, so I moved to Nashville.”

He calls his Nashville arrival in 2020 “a daunting thing,” adding, “I lived in an apartment with one of my best friends and the rent was like almost two grand a month. Obviously, living in a city was a big change but it was just making friends, networking and figuring out how to get my foot in the door.”

He quickly became a versatile creator and asset in the writing rooms, learning how to track and mix songs, and fashion demos. “YouTube was my best friend, and I had a few guys that let me shadow them and watch their process,” he says. “I credit that a lot for two things: getting me into better writing rooms, and also finding my voice. If I was writing with two or three writers, they’d want me to sing the demo. With bluegrass, nobody cared how you sang — they cared how you play. I knew I could sing, but I didn’t know what my voice was, so doing those demos helped me figure out what felt good for me.”

Five years later, Morgan has forged a career as both an artist in his own right, as well as an in-demand songcrafter. He wrote on eight songs for Aldean’s Macon, Georgia double project, including the chart-topper “Trouble With a Heartbreak,” and the Aldean/Carrie Underwood 2022 ACM Award-winning single of the year, “If I Didn’t Love You.” Morgan has also written songs recorded by Jon Pardi (“Hung the Moon”) and Thomas Rhett (“Country For California”).

Carolina Blue follows Morgan’s 2023 EP Remember Us?, which featured a solo version of “Friends Like That.” Co-writing each of the dozen songs on Carolina Blue, Morgan has filled the project with songs he’s stacked up over the past few years, working with co-writers including Allison, Will Bundy, Ben Hayslip, Kennedy, Randy Montana, Jordan Schmidt and Lydia Vaughan.

Managed by Maverick and booked by The Neal Agency, Morgan says his new album aims to connect listeners with his own story, while giving them universal songs to find their own point of relation. “I tried to capture that effect on this project of giving people different tastes of what I love and what I grew up listening to, but also keeping that identity as an artist,” Morgan says.

Below, Morgan — Billboard’s Country Rookie of the Month for March — opens up about his journey, his influences, working with Aldean and more.

Jason Aldean joins you on a new version of “Friends Like That.” How did that collab end up on the record?

I think we pitched it to [Jason] initially and it didn’t fit his record at the time. I released that song I guess two years ago and put it on the streaming world and shortly after that he reached out and said, “I’d love to look at doing a collab with you.” We got in the room and wrote some stuff together and got some cool stuff, but were never sold on it together. This song was doing its thing in the streaming world, so I said, “What if we reworked it? It fits both of our lanes. Sonically, it has that driving guitar and it’s a subject matter we can both sing about.” We went in and revamped it to make it its own thing.

Who else would you love to collaborate with?

I really love Cody Johnson. He’s just one of those guys that can absolutely rip. And he’s also just a great guy, has great messages in the song.

What is one album you never get tired of listening to?

Eric Church’s [2009 album] Carolina. I’ve been a fan of his and what he’s done over the past several years, just doing what he feels like is him in the moment. But that album specifically was inspiring to me. Casey Beathard is one of my favorite writers. It’s unbelievable what he can do with a hook. And truthfully, the [2009] Wide Open record from Aldean was a big influence, too.

You’ve written hits for other artists. When you moved to Nashville, did you at any point ever aim to be solely a songwriter?

It crossed my mind a lot, because I’ve got two kids now. The biggest thing you have to let go of [to be an artist] is your time. It crossed my mind, but I try to stay focused on the bigger picture. [Being an artist], it’s not only an outlet to provide for my family but also an outlet for people who have been in my corner from the beginning to take care of their families.

“Kid Myself” feels like a maturing, yet apologetic look at some past decisions. What inspired it?

That kind of pulls the curtain back a little bit on my personal life, a sense of a relationship that I was in back home in that whole time period where I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and taking my dad’s business over and all that. I was dating a girl and it was getting to a serious point where it was like, we either do this or don’t. I feel like “Kid Myself” is in a way, an apology and a sense of, “I’m sorry that it was such bad timing. I’m sorry that I was just a kid myself, too.”

What are your must-haves on the road?

It’s changed a bit, but I love a good, bottled whiskey. Woodford [Reserve]’s always been my go-to, and there’s Buffalo Trace. I’m not too particular. The funny thing is we always had on our rider a veggie tray, a fruit tray and a bottle of whiskey to balance it out.

What is the best career advice Jason has given you?

He’s very unique, in the sense that he’s got a 20-year career as an artist himself, and now as a publishing head and a record label head. The biggest piece of advice he gave me was when we were putting the album together and he’s like, “Don’t cut album fillers. You don’t need fillers; you need hits.” That changed my perspective on what this album was going to be. I feel like some of ‘em aren’t teed up to be radio hits, but I just made sure every song we cut had a great hook, great melody and had the potential to be a single.

Would you ever want to put out a bluegrass album in the future?

That’s one of my bucket list things. I know the last time saw Zach [Top], I said, “Dude, whenever things get rolling for us, let’s get together and make a bluegrass album.” That would be awesome.