Just Do you like Morganne
Morganne is rising to the top with Alternative Pop! She is from Oak Park, IL, which is right next to Chicago. Nothing has stopped her from reaching for the stars, not even being from the Midwest. The answer you are looking for is how this happened and it is TikTok! We have seen so many artists increasing their engagement on this platform and we can definitely state that TikTok is essential for the music industry. Morganne has 116.9K Followers with a total of 2.1 million likes, thus far. Her content is all about being her authentic self, but not short of promoting her music.
CASEY: Who are some of your music inspirations?
MORGANNE: I was actually just watching SNL where Billie Eilish, and she's a huge inspiration of mine. She was kind of what made me realize, why am I not doing music? I should be doing music.
Now, Go listen to her cover of Lost Cause by Billie Eilish!
CASEY: Where do you dream of your career going?
MORGANNE: My goal has always been to both host and perform on SNL. You have to be pretty ubiquitous. You have to be a household name, which would be cool. When I think of career paths or career trajectories that I admire or the heights that people have reached right now, Doja Cat is getting there– She's killing it. Obviously, Billie you know, all those fire female pop stars that we grew up with.
CASEY: What is your dream venue to sell out?
MORGANNE: I mean, yeah, the United Center in Chicago. It's the Madison Square Garden of Chicago and it's huge. I mean, on the way there I'd like to sell out the House of Blues in Chicago, right? Which it's more realistic than however many thousands of people in an arena, but if I'm playing United Center in Chicago, it would be fucking crazy because I'm pretty sure my first concert I think I saw Cher. You know? So I've just been going and seeing people there for forever. So to having the roles reversed would be crazy.
CASEY: I know you have recently released a single called “Do You,” Can you tell me what this song is about?
MORGANNE: Lyrics aside, it is the first song that I've put out that feels very Morganne. It is very neat. It uses a lot of colorful vocabulary, which I do in my writing. The production is all very me. It just feels as if somebody were to be, who is Morganne as an artist, I would show them that song. So that's kind of what the song means to me. It's a beacon for who I want to be as an artist.
Class is in session now.
CASEY: When it comes to writing music, what does your process look?
MORGANNE: The writing process for Do You was all over the place. I wrote it over the course of a year, or a year and a half. Wrote it, just chunk by chunk. I started with that first part that ‘do you blah, blah, blah, blah.’ I remember writing that on the stairs at my apartment while I was in school. I had the first chunk for so long.
She mentioned that he had a hip-hop producer, Namesake, work on the song, and realized it was not the best for the song. Morganne experimented with having different producers take a look at the song until she found one that clearly saw the full vision of “Do You”. There were moments in her life where the lyrics of the songs popped up at random times. For example, She came up with the George W. part of the song in the shower, while she was visiting her grandmother in Pennsylvania. I know most of us perform world tours in the shower, but this queen was busting out bars!
“I don’t really have a typical writing process. A couple of my favorite songs ever, I’ve written in one sitting and I always feel so good about those because they come out so easily. But I can’t just make that happen and it doesn’t happen very frequently.”
CASEY: How have you navigated your videos to gain so much traction on TikTok?
MORGANNE: I study TikTok a lot, which means lots of endless scrolling, but it's also mindful scrolling when I see other artists. I study a lot of other artists' TikToks. Whatever they've done that does well I see it and I take note, and I notice. What were they doing in the video? How long was it? How much effort did they put into it? Was it a fully orchestrated video from multiple angles? Or was it just one shot of them holding their phone? I think about their hashtags. Their caption. What texts do they have on the screen? If it goes along with a trend or not. If they're trying to create a trend or not. I take all those factors in, then I try to use those to also hopefully go viral. With “Do You”, this is not a new thing, but I'm putting lots of text on the screen on a short-ish video (under 15 seconds), so by the time the viewers finish reading it, it's already playing again in the background.
Morganne stressed that it was a lot of trial and error, but found something that really worked for her. I hope you aspiring artists took some notes from this section because this is vital information.
CASEY: Since you are from the Midwest, what have you done to stand out in the music scene?... Is it hard to promote your music?
MORGANNE: Hmm. I feel lucky that I feel comfortable promoting myself so much. I know a lot of artists don't. So for me, it's not terribly hard besides getting myself to sit down and do it. I will say, a lot of my connections are all out in LA and I feel if I were in LA right now, I would be playing shows. I don't really have that many connections in Chicago to be able to book or play shows. I am currently trying to compile a little band. This badass girl from my high school plays bass, and actually played in a touring band in LA for a while. Since she's back, I think she's gonna be playing bass for me. We're gonna find a drummer and a guitarist. So hopefully, I can compile a little band and then start playing some shows in Chicago. I would say if all my connections were in Chicago, I don't know if I would have as tough of a time.
She does have moments where she struggles with coming up with ideas to promote herself, but it is crucial to get comfortable being your own #1 fan when it comes to branding/promoting yourself.
CASEY: Do you have any advice for other artists that do not live in a major music hub?
MORGANNE: I know other independent artists who have now signed record deals through TikTok. My friend, King Mala, is now at 438,000 followers. That's all from Tik Tok. She's not with a major label but is really good at promoting herself on TikTok. My song recently got to 109,000 streams and that is not from playlists. That is from people finding it on Tik Tok and going over to Spotify and streaming. So it really does carry over and it really is the best freest way to get yourself out there.
Keep an eye on “Good Girl”, which is Morganne’s newest single! It is everything you did not know you needed to hear.
On the plus side? She has leaked part of the song on TikTok.
“It [her fashion style] means finally being myself and finally being able to express on the outside the way I have always felt on the inside.”
Go Pre-Save Morganne’s new Queer Anthem ‘Good Girl’
