Take Me to the Disco – Meg Myers

Fusing confessional lyrics with music that walks a tightrope between accessible pop and dour, emotionally forceful rock, Meg Myers is a singer and songwriter based in Nashville. She made her Billboard 200 debut in 2015 with her first album, Sorry.

Myers was born in 1987 in Nashville, Tennessee and raised in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains. Her dad was a truck driver, her mother was a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and both were amateur musicians. When her folks divorced, Myers’ mother soon remarried, this time to a fellow Jehovah’s Witness, and they decided to take Meg (then 12 years old) and her siblings out of public school and relocate to Florida. The family led a nomadic existence for several years as the children lived under the strict guidelines of the faith and their stepfather. She began learning to play guitar at the age of nine, and not long after relocating to Florida, Myers, looking for a means of expressing herself, formed a band with her brother. She learned to play guitar and bass, and began writing songs. When she was 20, she left Florida and moved with her boyfriend to Los Angeles.

It wasn’t long before Myers and her beau broke up, but she stayed in L.A. and waited tables, worked on her music, and played out as often as she could. In 2012, she was spotted by producer and remixer Doctor Rosen Rosen, and after signing her to a production deal, he soon took her into the studio. Later that year, she released her first EP, an online release called Daughter in the Choir. It earned enthusiastic reviews and plenty of YouTube traffic for the song “Monster,” though the track’s strong lyrics kept it off most radio outlets. Myers soon appeared on Last Call with Carson Daly, one of her songs was used in an episode of CSI: NY, and she began appearing at some of L.A.’s most prestigious venues, including the Viper Room, the Bootleg, and the Troubadour. In 2013, she landed a deal with Atlantic Records, which issued her second EP, Make a Shadow, that same year. The EP earned enthusiastic reviews for its musical sophistication and emotional force, and Myers began spending more time on the road, headlining club shows, opening for noted acts such as the Pixies, Royal Blood, and Alt-J, and playing major festivals including Lollapalooza and Governor’s Ball. In mid-2015, the title track from her full-length debut, Sorry, made the Top 20 of the Billboard Alternative Songs chart. After its release that September, the album reached number 79 on the Billboard 200.

Following the success of her first album, Myers relocated to her birthplace of Nashville and signed with 300 Entertainment. In early 2018, the label released the urgent rock tune “Numb,” the lead single off her follow-up LP, Take Me to the Disco, which arrived in July 2018. ~ Mark Deming