Dogs At The Table Turns Heartbreak Into Armor on Debut Single “I Wish You The Worst”
Matthew Ryan Morales, the San Antonio-born, Denver-built multi-instrumentalist behind Dogs At The Table, plays every part himself on a defiant first release about reclaiming time, energy, and self-respect.
Some artists find music as teenagers. For Matthew Ryan Morales, who records as Dogs At The Table, music was part of life from infancy. Born in San Antonio, Texas, he picked up instruments as a child, but the real turning point came after he moved to Denver, Colorado, where he started recording and writing songs of his own. At 30, he has turned that long apprenticeship into a debut: “I Wish You The Worst,” also stylized “I W Y T W,” released on April 17, 2025.
At 5:20, the track is a proper statement of intent. It’s the opening track of its release, and for Morales it marks the achievement he is proudest of: getting his first song onto the major streaming platforms.
Who Is Dogs At The Table?
Dogs At The Table is the solo project of Matthew Ryan Morales, and the “solo” part is meant literally. He is a singer, songwriter, DJ, producer, and engineer, and he approaches the project with a hands-on, do-it-yourself philosophy. Rather than outsourcing parts or leaning on programmed stand-ins, he builds his sound from real, live-recorded instruments played by him, with his own vocals on top.
His musical taste is deliberately wide. Asked about genres, he says he enjoys all kinds, with one exception: country. That open ears-first attitude is what you’d expect from someone who works both behind the decks and behind the mixing desk. He thinks in sound, texture, and feel as much as in chords and verses.
From San Antonio to Denver: Where the Songwriting Began
Morales started playing music as a child, but he’s clear about when it became serious. It wasn’t until he moved to Denver that he began recording and writing his own songs. That shift, from playing music to making it, is the foundation of Dogs At The Table.
He doesn’t follow a fixed writing formula. “It’s however my brain perceives a sound,” he explains. If a sound sticks with him after a few listens, it clicks, and the song starts to write itself in his head. He describes the moment he realized he had a natural gift as the point where his ear and brain began working together, guiding his hands and feet to land on sounds that simply feel good.
Inside “I Wish You The Worst”
Ask Morales which of his songs is his favorite, and the answer is immediate: “I Wish You The Worst.” The reason is the guitar. The riff is, in his words, so cool that he sometimes gives himself a pat on the back for coming up with it.
Lyrically, the song is a defiant, scorched-earth kiss-off. The narrator has been underestimated by someone who assumed he would break, and he answers with steel instead. The imagery runs through storms, shadows, and ashes, and the attitude is a flat refusal to stay small. A pre-chorus turns regret into the other person’s burden, while the chorus lands the central idea: the tables turn, and every lie becomes a lesson learned.
It’s an angry song, but not an aimless one. Underneath the bravado is a clear message about walking away from people who didn’t value you and walking toward your own growth. Even the project name, Dogs At The Table, feels like part of that conversation about who earns a seat and who doesn’t.
The Story Behind the Song: Choosing Yourself
The edge in the song comes from experience. Morales says he has poured a great deal of time and heart into people who couldn’t return it, and that pattern has too often left him on his own. Time, he says, is the most valuable thing he has, and he spent a lot of it in the wrong places instead of investing in himself.
Dogs At The Table is the correction. “I’m now doing things for me, and for the first time in my life, doing what I want,” he says of the shift. Read that way, “I Wish You The Worst” isn’t only a breakup song. It’s the sound of someone gathering the pieces and deciding where the next chapter of his time goes.
Music as a Window Into Emotion
For Morales, songwriting is how he says what words alone can’t. “It’s a window into who I am and the emotions I cannot describe with words,” he says.
He’s also relaxed about being misunderstood. Listeners bring their own histories, and sometimes their reading of a song is the opposite of what he intended. He doesn’t see that as a problem. “That doesn’t make it incorrect,” he says. Everyone is different, but experiences overlap, and that overlap is where the connection happens. He points to relationships, and to the ways listeners interpret the songs for themselves, as the themes that move his audience most.
The Challenges of Being a One-Man Operation
Doing everything yourself has a price, and Morales is honest about it. Mixing and mastering are the most time-consuming parts of his process, mainly because he doesn’t consider himself a trained engineer. When he hits a wall, he asks a mentor specific questions or searches online until he finds a solution.
That learn-it-yourself approach runs through the entire project. It’s part of why the music feels personal rather than polished into anonymity, and why the release carries the fingerprints of one person’s ear, hands, and persistence.
A Milestone, and a Bigger Ambition
Releasing his first track on major streaming platforms is the moment Morales points to as his proudest. His ambition from here is simple and enormous: “The world is my audience.”
For an independent artist who wrote, played, and shaped every element of the record himself, that’s not empty talk. It’s the natural next step for someone who has already decided to bet on himself.
Listen to Dogs At The Table
Stream “I Wish You The Worst” on Spotify, watch the video on YouTube, and follow Dogs At The Table on Instagram.
