During one of the best Milwaukee concerts of 2025, at the Rave’s Eagles Ballroom, country pop artist Megan Moroney showed she was ready to headline huge stages.
Well it doesn’t get much bigger than Summerfest’s largest venue on opening night.
Actually Moroney’s June 18 concert – at a capacity American Family Insurance Amphitheater for at least 20,000 fans – was the biggest audience of her “Cloud 9” tour.
Bringing polish and passion to 24 songs across an hour-and-fifty-five-minutes, Moroney proved she deserved the biggest stage at one of the world’s biggest music festivals – and absolutely made the most of it.
Rolling into town with at least a dozen semis, Moroney’s biggest tour to date, to borrow the name of a song from her latest album “Cloud 9,” brought out all the bells and whistles.
The stage was adorned with an elegant, frequently illuminated staircase with three arches at the top in front of video screens, looking like a stairway to heaven. (No Zeppelin request shout outs at this show, thankfully). There were several wardrobe changes and decked-out instruments – sequin-studded romper, pink princess skirt, guitars covered in rhinestones or pictures of pink fluffy clouds – that enhanced the aesthetic. And Moroney commanded the stage not just with stage sprints and exuberance, but damning eye rolls and acidic smiles that brought extra bite to her more withering lines.
A sharp seven-piece band also found spots to enhance the catalog live – injecting the end of “Medicine” with a touch of Texas two-step, for instance. “Change of Heart” had a change-up live with a heart-racing rock arrangement, and the band improved “Am I Okay?” with arena-ready anthemic grandeur.
But Moroney is a savvy enough performer to know that sometimes less can be more. Consider the live rendition at Summerfest of “Bells & Whistles,” her “Cloud 9” collaboration with Kacey Musgraves. A reserved condemnation of an ex, whose new partner doesn’t challenge him like the song’s protagonist did, Moroney performed it quietly while looking at herself in the mirror and doing make-up, the stage interpretation making the nuanced sentiment more engrossing. And then it ended with a smiling Moroney flipping a handheld mirror to show the audience a personal message: “MKE is Stronger and Blonder and Hotter.”
That was one special treat for this biggest show of the tour. Another was a relatively rare performance of Toby Keith’s “Who’s Your Daddy?” that’s mostly been reserved for festival sets since last summer, and also “Break It Right Back,” which she’s only performed three times this year according to setlist.fm, with the crowd of mostly teens and twentysomething women and moms proudly belting along with “can’t believe our luck” excitement.
That song was part of a special moment in the show Moroney said she wasn’t sure they could pull off in the amphitheater, with the star sitting in front of a “flying window” that was lifted above the crowd in the walkway behind the middle lower bowl section. From up high she also performed her biggest hit, “Tennessee Orange,” and offered a uplifting speech about persevering through life’s hardships before singing “Cloud 9” standout “Beautiful Things.” Just below her feet, I saw a mother and her teen daughter holding each other tightly, swaying and singing, raw emotion in their eyes.
Sure, Moroney brought all the bells and whistles. But that moment, that reaction, is the main reason she’s moved up to the arena (and Summerfest amphitheater)-filling A list. It’s because of her superb songs, the stickiness and relatability of her storytelling.
Show opener “Stupid” for instance examines being ghosted by a guy and goes on a full journey. There were comical moments of delusion – “No way he’d leave me on ‘read’ for two weeks on purpose” she sang before theorizing “maybe he’s busy picking flowers” – followed by a funny realization that the guy is ‘a lotta bit pretty and a little dumb He probably couldn’t spеll ‘valedictorian.'”
Her ultimate conclusion: “What’s there to not love? I’m the whole package.” That’s one gift from a Megan Moroney song – you can relate to her protagonist’s mistakes, laugh along at someone whose carelessly and foolishly done you wrong, and feel deservedly good about yourself at the end.
Another gift is the vulnerability of her words, perhaps best expressed at Summerfest for “Cloud 9” song “Who Hurt You?” When Moroney got to the bridge, it hit like a wrecking ball, akin to Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift at their most emotionally-charged. “Your ego, it needs feeding/Endlessly, relentlessly/At the cost of me,” Moroney sang vengefully at an ex, tens of thousands of women singing along with raw emotion in their voices. “And I’ll move on, and I’ll find better/But you’ll stay the same forever and ever, happy never.”
If Moroney keeps making songs like those, filled with smarts and heart, those huge stages are going to keep on coming.
JP Saxe, Solon Holt opened for Moroney
Moroney’s two openers leaned more into her pop side.
The first to take the stage, Texas native Solon Holt, knew most people in the crowd didn’t know who he was. Making matters more challenging, he was on his own for his 30-minute set with his voice, keys and acoustic guitar. Crowd chatter was unavoidable during breezy, John Mayer-indebted originals like “Make Me Wonder,” but even in these circumstances Holt had an easygoing confidence. After his debut album comes out in August, more people will definitely know who he is.
Second opener JP Saxe has had a fan in Moroney for at least five years, who covered his best-known song, “If The World Was Ending,” on TikTok five years ago. For his Summerfest set, his first performance in Milwaukee, Saxe repaid the favor soulfully covering Moroney’s “Why Johnny?” That gesture won fans over, as did a cover of a Sabrina Carpenter song he co-wrote, “Because I Liked a Boy.” Humorous self-deprecating banter and emotionally raw originals like unreleased new song “When I Lose You” also aided Saxe’s appeal as he too performed solo.
Megan Moroney’s Summerfest setlist
Contact Piet Levy at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Megan Moroney shines at biggest ‘Cloud 9’ show at Milwaukee Summerfest
Reporting by Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
