‘I’ve always had this blind faith’: Morgan Nagler talks writing with alt-rock’s biggest names – and makes her solo debut at 47 | music

TThe title of Morgan Nagler’s solo debut, I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It, speaks to the kind of wisdom you can only gain after several decades in the game, the kind that forces you to put your name on a debut album at age 47. But MO Nagler has been around since day one, as an 11-year-old child actor taking on a small role as a popular girl in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. “I showed up and there were 200 girls,” Nagler says. “I remember thinking I’ll never get this. So I decided to read the lines as a total geek.” The producers rewrote the part and hired her to kiss Carlton.

Today, Nagler lives in the same neighborhood as Will Smith himself — not Bel Air, but in a semi-rural enclave in Malibu, California, albeit in her friends’ guest house rather than a celebrity mansion. She began acting around the age of five, after her family moved from rural Oregon to California. She did this for two decades, starring in shows including Frasier, Star Trek and Clueless. But at the age of 26, Nagler took it all in to pursue music after realizing how satisfying she was playing guitar in her promo clip between takes. Some people told her she was making a mistake, but she knew otherwise. “Music is the only thing that makes me feel connected in any meaningful way. For me, that’s more important than comfort or stability. I’ve always had that blind faith,” Nagler says.

I’ve Got Nothing to Lose carries this into gorgeous Americana filled with tough optimism and persistent hooks: “Good old Grasolin always gets me where I want to go,” she sings on Grasolin, a happy ode to indelible weeding as if it’s been around since the heyday of outlaw country. She has been supported on the record by artists including Courtney Barnett, Maddy Diaz, Bethany Cosentino (FKA Best Coast) and Alison Crutchfield (Snocaps), demonstrating her “lifetime” status in music. “Along with all her sunshine and wordplay, there is a great, heavy weight of sadness and human compassion,” Gillian Welch, another of her collaborators, told me via email. “That, to me, is the hallmark of great poetry.”

The record was gradually put together alongside Nagler’s headlining gig as co-writer for other artists including Haim, Phoebe Bridgers and Kim Deal. “I wrote these songs because this is what I do,” she says, her voice cheerful and raspy, as she video calls from her boyfriend’s studio in Los Angeles, lava lamps twinkling in the corner. There was no grand plan. “I was never going to sit down and write a record that represented me on my ‘solo mission,’” she says. “I feel it’s important to share ourselves with each other, because it’s a time of isolation. Connecting with each other on a deep level is important because we make each other feel seen, less alone, more connected to the universe, and capable of doing more positive things.”

To be a professional songwriter, you have to be great, and Nagler clearly is; For an hour, her sunny sense of purpose makes me forget that I feel like a sickly Victorian orphan in the third week of an interminable British winter, even if her enthusiasm in Los Angeles is hard to stifle by a rare bout of rain.

Despite her early convictions, Nagler still received some encouragement to pursue music properly. Her best friend is musician Jenny Lewis, who is also a former child star. They were vaguely aware of each other as kids on the track, but it wasn’t until Nagler acted with Blake Sennett, Lewis’ bandmate in Rilo Kelly, that they connected. “She was my hero,” Nagler says. “When I started writing the songs for my trailer, I had no intention of getting involved. She forced me to do it, found my first guitar player, and said, ‘You’re going to have a band.’ This became the American outfit Whispertown. “She paid to record all my records, then I would pay her back, and she would always make me open for her.” Nagler’s glass-half-full mentality was immortalized in Rilo Kelly’s 2004 song “The Absence of God”: “And Morgan says: Maybe love won’t let you down / All your failures are training grounds / And just as you turn your back, you’ll be surprised.”

In 2006, Whispertown were supporting Lewis and the Watson Twins on that year’s Rabbit Fur Coat album tour. They included a cover of David Rawlings and Welch’s song Look at Miss Ohio in their set list. Unbeknownst to Nagler, the esteemed duo were in the crowd one night. Two years later, Rawlings called her and invited her to Nashville to spend six months writing with them. Nagler describes the experience as her version of going to college. “I grew up with this mentality, and I used to call it ‘the puke method’ – the song just comes out and who am I to mess with it? They taught me the craft – no, you sit with it, edit, and improve the song to be the best; it’s not a good song unless You I think it’s a good song.”

However, the vomiting method revealed something for Welch and Rawlings, who wrote “Sweet Tooth” with Nagler. “Morgan has a lot of confidence in her imagination and her strength,” Welsh tells me. “It allows connections to happen, even if the line of logical meaning is broken. It’s a deeper path. David and I were feeling very self-critical at the time, and it was very helpful to bring back that sense of non-linear playfulness in writing.” (It’s also important to be a great commentator: Nagler “makes a mean braised sprout,” says Welch.)

As Nagler’s bands continued to plow their own furrow, other writing opportunities arose. Whispertown backed the Breeders: Kim Deal was impressed by Nagler’s little stage shorts and voice, and asked them to write together, which resulted in some songs being produced. “I don’t know if she remembers it, but years ago, we were taking a break in the yard, and she said, ‘Morgan, not everyone is going to like you.’ I was like, ‘Oh, you just hit me where it hurts!'” Nagler says. “And then I realized, ‘It’s almost the same lesson from Jill and David, which is: Do what you want, what you think is cool.’

Nagler ended up writing with Haim on their debut because Danielle Haim played guitar with Lewis. Around 2019, Bridgers helped finish her 2020 song Kyoto, which was nominated for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song at the 2021 Grammy Awards. That made Nagler realize she should formalize her publishing deal and make a real attempt at songwriting, and try to help artists find their own sound: In recent years, she’s been working with artists including Diaz, Tyler Baljem, and Claude. The session “ideally starts with a small therapy session,” she says. “When I started, I was coming up with a lot of ideas for beginning songs, and I realized it made sense to tap into the energy in the room, which is the special thing that’s happening in the moment.”

You may have noticed that Nagler’s songwriting career began with the pandemic, which is not a great time to start a new gig. Making a living as a songwriter in this day and age is “pretty terrible,” she says. “It’s very frustrating. Unbelievable. It’s a 1% attitude – you need to.” [cut on a] A Beyoncé song or something like that to fund the rest of your existence. She says the full impact of AI undermining limited revenue streams remains unknown. “I think I’m already a specialist, and with my hopeful spirit, I think specialization might actually become more valuable because it’s so easy now to seem perfect.”

Nagler’s own album is full of songs about achieving your goals against the odds: “Follow your gut / Nobody said it’d be easy / I’m suffering so bad, but / My medicine’s making me sick,” she sings in a tribute from a moonlit, longing Mars. She is proud to release her first official solo recording at the age of 47. “I want to talk about that, because the older you get, the more life experience you have to draw from,” she says. “That’s an important perspective. I’m proud that I’ve been able to forge a life where I can continue to make art, and I’m completely dedicated to that. It feels like a real accomplishment, because it’s not easy.”

“You can see the album title as either bleak or optimistic,” she says. “I kind of hate the term ‘toxic positivity,’ but I think it’s important to be realistic and understand what’s going on in the world, and it’s equally important to continue to have hope.” Going solo, she says, is “chasing a dream, but not really — the dream is just being and being happy and putting beauty in the world.”