John Morgan’s ‘Cry Baby’ Turns Personal Hurt Into a Potential Hit: ‘Just a Part of Life’

They’re necessary in any adult relationship, but saying the right words, at the right time, is tricky, and muffing it up can actually dig the hole deeper. More importantly, if an apology is due, it means somebody did — or said — something hurtful. Having made a mistake that requires an “I’m sorry” is what sucks the most about trying to make amends.

“If you care about a person in a relationship, there’s going to be times where you’re pissed off at each other, and you’re gonna say something that just comes right out,” says John Morgan. “People get stressed, you know, and they say things that you wouldn’t normally say. That’s just part of life, being able to grow through those moments.”

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Apologizing for a stray remark is one thing. Taking ownership for a series of mistakes is next level, and songwriter Tully Kennedy (“If I Didn’t Love You,” “Tip It on Back”), around the time of his 20th wedding anniversary, took stock of the relationship he’d built with his wife.

“I’m thinking about all the times I wasn’t the best boyfriend back in the day, or the best husband,” he says. “I looked at her, and I said, ‘You know, sorry I made you cry, baby.’”

He had a writing appointment that day — April 11, 2025 — at BMG Music on Nashville’s Music Row with Kurt Allison (“Anytime Soon,” “Seein’ Red”) and Lydia Vaughan (“If I Didn’t Love You,” “Bar None”), and on his commute, that personal moment started to feel like the foundation for a song.

“’Cry Baby’ — I loved the play on the hook,” Kennedy says. “If you look at ‘Cry Baby,’ there’s so many different ways you can take that.”

When he suggested the title at BMG, Vaughan fixated on the option Kennedy preferred, even before he finished explaining it, and they all dove in. Allison had a moody, introspective-sounding musical track that he’d created, and when he played it, Kennedy gave it a thumbs up.

“You can’t really go too far down the road if you’re not matching a vibe with [the idea], especially that title,” Allison notes. “That title has to really land in a certain spot.”

Kennedy sang the first couple lines in a conversational tone, approximating the apology he’d offered to his wife. The goal was to develop it with phrases that some guy listening in his car could envision saying to his other half: vulnerable, but not weak.

“I’m 51 now, so I can look back and be like, ‘Boy, I handled that wrong,’” Kennedy says. “It’s actually been a great tool in my songwriting in these later years, because I can look back on all the things I’ve missed, and got wrong, and was insensitive [about]. I can kind of draw off that well a little bit more than I could a while ago.”

The chorus lifted musically, and they hammered the title home in the first line of that section: “I don’t wanna make you cry, baby.” They hit a similar rhyme scheme five times in the chorus — “eyes, baby,” “fight, baby” — emphasizing the “i” rhyme, then backing off on the “baby” part.

“It’s easy to sing along to that way,” Vaughan notes, “but it also makes it less like, ‘Wow, they’re just saying “baby” over and over again,’ because the emphasis isn’t actually on ‘baby’ each time.”

In the process, they transitioned from the opening verse’s admission of a screw-up to the moment when the guy tries to make it right. They continued even more positively in verse two with the singer crediting his long-term improvement as a human being to his woman’s influence.

In the bridge, the singer contemplates what it would mean if this fight would cost him the relationship. It’s a familiar step in diffusing many couples’ arguments.

“Everyone has had a fight — or multiple — with their significant other that has made you question the relationship,” Vaughan says. “You know, ‘If we’re fighting like this, does this mean we’re not right together?’ And that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s actually the opposite. Sometimes when you fight, it’s because you really care about the relationship and you want it to improve. Obviously, it’s different for everybody, but that bridge thought is kind of a natural thing that comes with fighting sometimes.”

They didn’t finish the song that day. When they next went to the publishing company, Morgan was part of the group, and he made some tweaks that improved it. Morgan sang on the “Cry Baby” demo, produced by Allison, with Vaughan providing harmonies. They’d written the song with Jason Aldean in mind — no surprise, since Kennedy and Allison play in his road band — and Kennedy sent it to him.

“Something that we’ve always kept in mind with him is that he is okay with having faults and knowing that he’s not the perfect person,” Allison offers. “He’s vulnerable enough to embrace those things, but [say] ‘I make a lot of mistakes, but I’m going to be the best version of myself that I can for you.’”

Aldean had just finished an album, and he thought Morgan could have a hit with “Cry Baby,” so he let it go. Morgan enthusiastically took it back.

“The melody is the is the money maker, to me, in that song,” Morgan says. “It’s an earworm, and I couldn’t let it just stay in the catalog.”

Morgan and producer Brent Anderson (Chris Janson, Jameson Rodgers) started building the final version after the first of the year, layering multiple guitar parts and reworking the instrumental riff in the intro. As the foundation filled out, Anderson brought in two of Morgan’s band members, bassist Caleb Bates and drummer Rob Ricotta, to record the rhythm section. And they brought Vaughan in to recreate her harmonies from the demo.

“She’s just such a good singer,” Anderson says. “Once you heard a little taste of it, you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s the sauce.’”

Unfortunately, her recordings were lost in a robbery. After Anderson played the Bluebird Café on Feb. 17, he came home, parked his car in the driveway for just 10 minutes, and when he returned to the vehicle, his backpack with the hard drive containing her performance was gone. He posted about it on social media and was stunned when four fellow producers — Matt Dragstrem, Derek George, Derek Wells and Frank Rogers — offered their studios and gear so that he could finish “Cry Baby” on time.

“It was really eye-opening to me,” Anderson notes. “It made me feel the strongest sense of community I’ve felt in a while.”

Vaughan re-recorded her backing vocals, making it the third time she’d played that role for “Cry Baby” — “Good thing I like this song,” she quips — and steel guitarist Mike Johnson added the final new part.

Thanks to the assist from Anderson’s fellow producers, they still got the song finished by the due date — “You get a timeline no matter what,” Morgan says — and Broken Bow released it to country radio via PlayMPE on Oct. 12, as his previous single, “Kid Myself,” peaked at No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Oct. 17. Programmers suggested to Morgan that “Cry Baby” could continue his momentum.

“I’ve been doing radio tours for a couple years now,” he says, “and when I get to talk to PDs, I ask them, you know, ‘What are you thinking?’ There was an overwhelming ‘yes’ on this song.”