Album Review: Molly Millington – Frank Morgan

In keeping with the title, Molly Millington wears a lot of hats, but often a country one, on her debut album, Frank Morgan.

When you consider that it has a run time of 27 minutes and packs 12 bangers into that – well, technically 12, but we’ll get to that later – the album becomes even more impressive.

If you’re not aware, Frank Morgan was a character actor who is remembered for playing five very different parts in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz, including the Wizard himself.

Molly Millington isn’t acting out roles on the album, however. It looks at the varying roles expected or imposed on people, especially women, in a world where we are expected to be everything for everyone all the time.

Opener Just Drive is a great guide to the album, as well as being an epic driving song – driving hard and fast with the radio on, not a care in the world for just a brief window in time. Your Villain is sharp and observant, like listening to someone trying to sing through tears and heartbreak, with a kind of domestic drama that was such a feature of Dolly Parton’s 70s music – feminist with an open heart, hard when it needs to be, detailing when the spark in a relationship has gone.

On My Man, the song is coming from the view of a woman betrayed by an unfaithful partner. Instead of being a victim, she fights through the pain, asserting her independence as she does so. That’s paired nicely with Girl Next Door, a cheeky number in the style of Kacey Musgraves. Millington again asserts independence, letting us know that life is to be lived, and love is to be enjoyed.

The album is sex-positive and playful with it, with the title character of Julius being invited over for fun times, no shame, just embracing sex and sexuality as a freeing, enabling experience. It has such a feeling of joy about it, being happy in your own skin, that it lives on in the memory after the song finishes.

The End is the joker in the pack, a mere thirty seconds, an explicit sketch that is pithy and pointed as Millington bids us goodbye, outro style, via a voice note set to music. And best of all, it has a lesson we should all try to learn in 2026: ‘Don’t let the bitches bring you down.’

Frank Morgan is an impressive debut album. Millington has a country-style knack for creating characters that are empathetic and scenarios that feel real. You can hear yourself in songs like Just Drive and Greener Than Me for sure, but the album showcases her ability to get inside the skins and minds of others.

Millington does something totally engrossing on Frank Morgan: she combines the storytelling chops of great country writers with a genre-free fusion of country, folk, and rock that will appeal to fans of Boygenius and Phoebe Bridgers. She has described the album as ‘a little bit country, a little bit pop; it’s happy, sad, but always honest,’ and I’m not sure I could have put it better than that.

Frank Morgan can be heard on Spotify and YouTube Music. Get to know Molly Millington better and learn more about Frank Morgan on her Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok accounts.