An “unquenchable thirst for attention” helped lead Morgan Jay to a career in both comedy and music that works for him.
With a successful career and a thriving social media presence, Jay is well known for his craft. He is preparing to take his show on the road for a tour that will span many cities from September to November.
Morgan Jay always knew the performing arts were her calling
Jay’s first open mic was at age 18, shortly after starting college at NYU. And he hasn’t looked back since.
“My first open mic was my second day of college at NYU. An 18-year-old armed with mediocre Spiderman jokes. I thought it would be a small crowd, but there were 400 students there,” he said. he told The Blast exclusively, “It wasn’t until 2007 that I started going to open mics and shows on a regular basis. I wanted to do something in the performing arts in high school, and the stand-up was such a cool art form.
Another thing he credits is his desire to get into stand-up comedy – he wanted girls to like him.
“I had an unquenchable thirst for attention that subsided a bit, but not completely,” he said.
The combination of music and comedy in a show came “from a place of frustration, exploration, and respect.” He was frustrated with only telling jokes and wasn’t excited about what he had to say.
“I had to ask myself, if I was going to continue down this path, how was I going to embrace the process,” he explained.
“Exploration in the sense that I only wrote two songs at first, and I was going to test it as an experiment. I never said, ‘I’m a musical comedian.’ I always allowed myself to admit when something wasn’t working, and respect the fact that there were musicians and comedians I admired like Steven Lynch, Adam Sandler or Jamie Foxx.
Morgan Jay has a new show and tour coming up
Jay self-produced his one-hour special, “Live at the Village,” and released it on YouTube on May 31. He is set to embark on his multi-city “Love Across the Galaxy” tour in support of his YouTube special.
Jay had some tips for watching his new special.
“You don’t have to watch this special all at once. It’s ten songs; it is divided into chapters. In a world where attention spans are shrinking, I wanted people to know they could stop and start again at any time,” he told The Blast.
“It was done with the person watching from their home in mind. The person is looking on his phone. I want them to feel like they’re in the room.
Much of his material comes from universal topics. He explained that he wasn’t “completely pushing the envelope” or that he was “incredibly pissed off.” Jay keeps race, religion and politics out of his material and sticks to talking about dating and relationships.
Jay’s social media pages are thriving. He has nearly a million followers on TikTok and another 152,000 on Instagram. With an active TikTok page, Jay said he enjoys the “ability to build a fan base” on his own.
“The ability to reach a huge number of people with a single video can really change everything,” he told The Blast. “It has, in my case, about my career and show ticket sales. I also like how you can put out a video that might be terrible, and if no one sees it, that’s fine. It’ll just be buried .
As for a favorite performance, Jay once sang a song in college, which sticks in his memories.
“The song ends on self-love and your worth,” he said. “This student left after the song, which was at the start of the show. I thought they didn’t like it, but they messaged me later to tell me how they went back to their dorm and cried because they said they had a hard time loving each other and the song helped them. I think we underestimate the impact of our art on our audience.
For more information on Morgan Jay and his upcoming tour, visit his website.