Caitlin Gentry

EN 102-021

January 30, 2024

Dr. Bonnie Whitener

A Modern Day Love Story

In today's world, like any time before, we all crave love and attention from someone. We all

want that specific person or significant other to spend the rest of our lives with. We crave a steady

and healthy relationship. While others find that particular person, they will spend the rest of their

lives pretty easily without going through too much heartache and strife. Others are not that lucky.

Others will lose themselves in a toxic relationship. They lose their personal worth and self-love

because of what the other person did or didn't do. And when they eventually look in the Mirror, they

no longer recognize the reflection.

Megan Moroney has become one of the fastest-growing female country singers in the past

year and a half. Her song Tennessee Orange blew up on TikTok and eventually launched her into the

country music limelight. Lucky, the name of her debut album, released in 2023, was a wild success

on all music streaming sites. But, one song stood out from the rest, which was the song labeled The

Girl in the Mirror. A song about heartbreak was a soul-touching sentiment for all girls who have lost

themselves in toxic relationships and who have lost their self-love. It effectively captures all the

emotions and experiences that all women go through while going through poisonous relationships.

Moroney has been very open about her heartbreak with men since the beginning of her career. Most

of her discography contains songs about heartbreak and broken men. She writes all her songs and

brings real-life influences, whether people or events, into the lyrics. In an interview with CMT, she
gave an interview about her album Lucky and said, "Prepare to feel all the things because there's a

little bit of everything. There's no denying a lot of hurt on this record, but nothing has healed my heart

like songwriting." And Girl in the Mirror is a testament to that heartbreak she is talking about as she

calls this "her most vulnerable song yet," according to countrynow.com. Moroney uses her hurt to

connect to her audience through her writing by using her own experience to portray how women feel

in toxic relationships.

The song starts with the lines, "The girl in the mirror, She's lost her damn mind, She's gotten

too used to, Cryin' all the time." As we start to dissect what these lyrics mean, a woman is staring at

herself in a mirror, and she feels like she has gone crazy because she has gotten used to crying and

feeling sad constantly. From my personal experiences and women in my own life going through this

type of event, this is how they usually think. We will look in the Mirror figuratively or literally and feel

like we have gone crazy because we ask ourselves, "When was the last time I was happy and didn't

cry on a consent basis?" As we move on to the following line, she writes, "He puts her down, She puts

him pedestal high. The girl in the Mirror, She's lost her damn mind" This part of the lyrics touches on

the point of why this girl has gone "crazy," and it is because of a boy. She idolizes him as a perfect

person who can not do anything wrong. As you continue listening to the song, it says, "She looks just

like me, but I don't recognize her; she's got the same eyes, but they're heavy and tired." As Moroney

looks in the Mirror, she does not recognize herself because of her eyes.

There is a saying that eyes are the windows to the soul. When she looks into her eyes in the Mirror,

she doesn't recognize them because they are "heavy and tired," thus insinuating that when she used

to look into the Mirror, they used to be bright and full of life instead of being drained. She then writes

the lyrics, "He just walked out, and she's standing right here; She loves the boy more than she loves

the girl in the mirror." She has been ultimately left behind after giving all of herself to him, and she is

staying put in her spot. She can't move forward. She has lost her self-worth because she loved him

more than herself. But then, in the third stanza, she writes, "The girl in the Mirror used to know who

she was. Now she's up wondering why she's not enough." As women, we already compare ourselves
to other women and how they look, but when we are rejected in relationships, we wonder why. Was it

something we did? Is it the way I look? Could I have done more? We ultimately blame ourselves for

our shortcomings in relationships, even if they are toxic ones like the one explained in this song.

The song repeats itself in the next stanza, but then it says in the fifth. "She's wearing the dress I wore

out tonight; I'm the girl in the mirror, that's why." This is where, even though we know that Moroney is

writing about herself, she explicitly says she is the girl in the Mirror. The last three lines of the song

are the ones that hit the hardest for women who listen to the music, which are, "Why it didn't work,

well, it's clear, I loved the boy more than I love the girl in the mirror, You can't love the boy more than

you love the girl in the mirror." Moroney writes that she finally realized why this relationship didn't

work out. It wasn't because she wasn't good enough or didn't do enough. It was because she put a

man before herself and loved him more than she loved herself at the end of the day. She then ends

the song by giving some advice for all women worldwide, saying that you can't love a man you are in

a relationship with more than you love yourself. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, you only

have yourself.

This song is a modern-day love story for most and comforts people who have been through

this same event. The emotions in this song portray an event in any woman's life that she can relate

to. Moroney perfectly portrays and captures this through her thoughtful and heart-string-pulling

lyrics.
 Work Cited

Laurenjoblack. (2023, April 14). Megan Moroney shares her most vulernable song yet, “girl in

the Mirror.” Country Now. https://countrynow.com/megan-moroney-shares-her-most-

vulernable-song-yet-girl-in-the-mirror/

Watts, C. (n.d.). Megan Moroney: Country Music’s EMO cowgirl talks broken hearts,

songwriting and earning respect. CMT. https://www.cmt.com/news/4bmai1/megan-

moroney-country-musics-emo-cowgirl-talks-broken-hearts-songwriting-and-earning-

respect