Quality Americana

Maren Morris, the 33-year-old songwriter that seemingly rose from obscurity in 2017 with hits “My Church” and “80s Mercedes” from her breakout album Hero, announced that she’s leaving country music. 

Morris’ announcement was made yesterday in an interview with Los Angeles Times’ reporter Mikael Wood. It comes after a rebranding and her move to the Columbia Records label with her new release The Bridge.

Marren Morris’ Texas Upbringing

Morris was raised in Arlington, Texas. This suburban town sits just between Dallas and Fort Worth and is the home of the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers. Famed honky tonks like Billy Bob’s and Gilly’s create a vibrant scene for Red Dirt and country performers in the area, and after getting her start Morris relocated to Nashville and started penning songs for major label artists. 

Morris has found tremendous success in the country world, reaching the Billboard top 10 eight times, winning a Grammy and five CMA awards. The recent announcement would normally be a shocking decision for a categorized artist with success on the red carpet shows, but Morris has been feuding with other stars publicly over social media and pushing back against a good ol’ boys club that’s stuck in the past. Many fans observed the change unofficially throughout the past year. 

“I’ve tried to avoid a lot of it at all costs. I feel very, very distanced from it,” Morris told the Los Angeles Times about the recent hit “Try That in a Small Town” by Jason Aldean. The song is only one piece to a larger puzzle of the politically charged hits coming out of Nashville. One reason for the move is that Morris would often wonder if her art was marketable in the genre while writing, something that held back her creativity. 

“I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we’ll market it,” Morris said. She goes on to say that she is “one of the few women that had any success on country radio,” and that this often kept her questioning what backlash she could face from her writing. 

“I didn’t think of myself as a political artist. I just wrote songs about real life through a lens of deep respect for my country heroes,” Morris said. “But the further you get into the country music business, that’s when you start to see the cracks. And once you see it, you can’t un-see it. So you start doing everything you can with the little power you have to make things better.” 

Maren Morris Faces Public Backlash

Morris compared herself to the Dixie Chicks, who faced public backlash after criticizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It’s often hard to remember how serious that backlash was as the nation was on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussain was accused of possessing secret nuclear weapons.

“We do not want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas,” Natalie Maines publicly said in a statement that shocked country music. The industry quickly wrote them off as a major act and fans debated their remarks. President George W. Bush even weighed in on the controversy saying the Chicks’ “shouldn’t have their feelings hurt just because some people don’t want to buy their records when they speak out.” We can only imagine the president today having to comment on the entertainment industry and its take on foreign policy. 

“People are streaming these songs out of spite,” Morris said about some of the latest politically charged hits. “It’s not out of true joy or love of the music. It’s to own the libs. And that’s so not what music is intended for. Music is supposed to be the voice of the oppressed, the actual oppressed. And now it’s being used as this really toxic weapon in culture wars.”

Maren Morris Performs on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour

Morris recently performed a song with Taylor Swift in Chicago on the Eras tour and said that she has been a mentor throughout her career. Morris also said she wants to have a genre free career like Linda Rodstadt “She’s weaved through so many different genres, and she just had one of those voices that can kind of fit anywhere because you believe her when she sings something.” 

Fans had mixed reactions on social media as the news broke. 

“Sending so much love to Maren Morris today,” Aust posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Thank you for being on the right side of history & making music that truly matters. go shine even brighter than you were queen!”

Morris is currently on tour with The Chicks in Canada. More information can be found here. 

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