Morgana: "I have a really driving desire to feel understood, to make music, and to put my feelings into songs"

Release day was an emotional one for Morgana. After almost three years crafting her solo debut, The Whole Thing Was Very Very Emotional, how did she feel when the moment finally arrived?

“I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” she admits. “I spent the last couple of months almost dreading the release, because I have been sitting on these songs. I had a lot of complicated feelings about today. But then I woke up, had some nice messages from friends, and for the first time in a long time, I listened to the album from start to finish. I thought, ‘I’m actually proud of myself.’”

The groundwork for the record began taking shape following a period of personal and musical evolution after her work in folk duo Saint Sister. Around 2022, the pair decided to go their separate ways, with Gemma Doherty shifting towards film and TV composition, while Morgana began carving out her path as a solo artist.

“I have a driving desire to feel understood, to make music, and to put my feelings into songs,” says Morgana. “I was always going to do that, it just depended on which project it would fit into. When you get to your thirties, it gets harder to go on the road and make sure everyone’s enjoying themselves.”

That doesn’t mean Saint Sister are definitively done. The duo recently played their first live show together in three years at Dublin’s National Concert Hall, performing their sophomore album, Where I Should End, as part of a series celebrating women in music. Previously, they had taken to the NCH main stage in May to headline the Festival of Voice.

“It was so nice to be able to do both,” Morgana explains. “To have that really considered, quiet, thoughtful scene and then, in contrast to that, be able to go onstage a couple of weeks later and let my voice rip and prance around the stage.”  Without Doherty by her side, days like release day are “definitely scarier”. Being solely responsible for a record, without someone to check in with or bounce ideas off, can be lonely.  “But it’s also nice to feel only responsible for yourself,” says Morgana.

“I like that when I’m on stage, if I make a mistake, I don’t feel like I’ve let anyone else down – the only person I’ve let down is myself. There’s a freedom in that.”  Saint Sister’s sound was built around electro-harp and closely blended vocals, an understated aesthetic the pair called “atmosfolk”. Morgana’s solo work leans towards something different altogether: sad-pop threaded with 1980s synths.

HIGH ENERGY

“I wanted to make sure this project felt distinct from Saint Sister,” the singer notes. “So I was writing from the perspective of really needing everything to be high energy, bombastic, more poppy.”

That need to prove she’d flown the folk nest, however, has softened. “Now that I’ve settled into this project, I don’t feel that anymore. If a song suits that kind of world, I will definitely bring it there, but I’m not as desperate to make sure every song fits that space anymore.

“At the start I had a very specific idea, and now I’m just trying to write what feels good. The next record is going to have a slightly different tone, maybe a bit more mellow, but also have those fun moments.”  Those playful instincts are all over the album, not least in its title, which manages to sound both knowingly funny and genuinely heartfelt. Did she always know the record needed that kind of emotional contradiction?

“I had a different album title in mind for a while,” Morgana reflects. “Then when I was writing ‘Sidekick’, I had a line, ‘When we were screaming for any team to beat England’. I thought maybe I’m a football girlie now, and I was wondering if I could get any sports references into the song.”  Her husband found a YouTube clip of Packie Bonner talking about a major match between Ireland and England, which Ireland won.

“He said, ‘The whole thing was very, very emotional,’ and that’s so deadpan.”  The line struck her as the perfect contradiction. “Exactly that: it’s very sincere to say something evokes so much emotion. But to say it so deadpan, I thought that was really perfect, it really undercut itself. I took a little sample of that and put it on the song, it’s really buried underneath.”

That blend of sincerity and self-awareness extends to Morgana’s theatrical streak. A self-described “nerdy theatre kid”, she once hoped to become an actor, applying to drama schools without success.  “In my mind, I’m a failed actor,” she says. “If I can’t do acting the way I want to, then I’ll get the music to a certain stage where they’ll have to let me (laughs). Y’know the way Lily Allen does theatre? That’s the goal, to get to that stage.”

The acting credits may still be elusive, but theatricality runs through her music and live shows. “I didn’t want to play it safe,” Morgana explains. “That’s why I’m bringing out weird props – I’ve got a disco ball helmet and a big orb. You don’t know how it’s going to land, but someone might think that’s interesting, and that’s the goal.”

The album itself follows a carefully plotted trajectory, its tracklist designed to mimic a night out slowly coming undone. “It was in a completely different order for a while, more of a sonic order, and then I really dug into the retrospective meaning behind each song.”  The opening track, ‘Make It Hot Make It Cool,’ captures teenage love and the magic of sitting beside someone in a car park, “and that being the best night of your life.”

From there, the cracks begin to show. By the closing track, ‘Win Once’, “everyone’s left the party, and you’re on your own, you don’t know why you’re there, and you don’t know how to get home.”

Across the record, heartbreak and vulnerability collide with an undeniable urge to dance through the pain. Restless, high-energy production mirrors the anxiety of having too many possible directions to take, while the lyrics mourn the paths left untaken.

BUSY SCHEDULE

“The idea of every little thing that you do having an impact,” says Morgana, “that there are endless versions of reality out there, and you have a part to play unknowingly in directing that, is really overwhelming for me and something I think about all the time.”

Is this idea superstitious? “Existential,” she suggests. “In some ways, you’ve no control over it, because life will happen, but also your choices matter – it’s too much for me!”

Life, meanwhile, has been happening quickly. Morgana has spent the summer performing, opening for Snow Patrol and Dermot Kennedy alongside a busy festival schedule. Other highlights included singing at Paris Fashion Week and performing in an Amazonian opera house.

“It’s all stuff that I wanted to be doing,” she says. “It all feels like a privilege. Any time I feel too busy or stressed, I just remember there have been times when I haven’t been busy and that feels so much worse.” And despite the nerves surrounding release day, her attention is already turning towards what comes next.

“It’s something I’m already thinking about,” says Morgana. “I have four songs ready I’m just itching to get out there. I’m a different artist now, and I can’t wait to show everyone I’ve been working on other stuff.”

• The Whole Thing Was Very Very Emotional is out now.