Kylie Morgan Shares the ‘Crazy Story’ Behind ‘If He Wanted to He Would’

Kylie Morgan owes her breakout 2022 single, "If He Wanted to He Would," to TikTok — in more ways than one.

The Oklahoma native has been hearing that particular piece of wisdom, "If they wanted to, then they would," for years. Still, it might never have occurred to her to use it as a song title if the phrase didn't start popping up all over social media. Morgan first noticed it as a TikTok trend — and then she started seeing it everywhere.

"I was shocked that no one had actually written the song," Morgan told Taste of Country in November, on the red carpet for the 2023 BMI Country Awards in Nashville.

She checked through every channel she could find, and when she found that the title wasn't taken, Morgan realized she'd struck gold.

"As a songwriter, to find a title that no one has written already is like a one-in-a-million thing," she explains.

But TikTok didn't just give her a title idea — it also gave her a co-writer.

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"This is actually a crazy story. I met this girl [Zandi Holup] on TikTok. She didn't have a deal. She didn't really have anything going on. [I was] scrolling through my feed, saw her, loved her and reached out to her. I'd never done that before," Morgan continues.

So she teamed up with Holup and Ben Johnson, and "If He Wanted to He Would" was born.

In October, she expanded her output with Making It Up as I Go, her debut full-length album on UMG Nashville. "If He Wanted to He Would" clocks in at track 10 on the 12-song project. A self-described "album fan forever," Morgan says that as proud as she is of the singles and up-tempo songs off Making it Up as I Go, she's equally proud of the vulnerability she was able to share on tracks like "Old Me" and "Quarter Life Crisis" — the latter of which she wrote solo.

"Especially with the vulnerable songs, you kinda just want to be your own editor," Morgan explains, when asked what kind of songs are best served by a solo write.

"[You want to] not have someone be like, 'Yeah, but this is the technical way we should do it for the process of songwriting,'" she elaborates. " I'm all about that when it comes to radio singles. But when it came to the album, I just wanted a song that was me, myself and I."