Back in 2023, country music star Maren Morris made headlines (literally, at the Los Angeles Times) with the stance that she was done with the country music industry. At the time, it seemed like it had been building for a little while; that was the year of “Try That In A Small Town” and “Rich Men North Of Richmond” and Morris’ peers in the industry were often ambivalent, at best, about confronting racism and anti-trans biases in the industry. (Morris, at the time, called Brittany Aldean “insurrection Barbie” on FKA Twitter, which remains pretty solid.) While Morris’ anger was righteous, she does at least feel like that L.A. Times headline was “really unfortunate.”
This is per a new interview with The Guardian. (That headline: “I never said I’m leaving country music.”) “I never said I’m leaving country music, because that’s not really how I feel at all,” Morris tells the British outlet. “You hear country music on this album [2025’s Dreamsicle]. You can’t just intentionally take the parts away. There would be nothing left of the sound of me. Because it’s just there. It’s in my bones and it’s in the way I write.”
Morris did attempt to clarify her comments later in 2023, appearing on the New York Times Popcast to explain that she was only done with the “toxic arms” of the industry, as in she wouldn’t participate in award shows or submit her music to country radio. But it sounds like it’s the initial comments that have followed her a lot further than the explanation. The L.A. Times story “caused a ton of unnecessary drama for me from that community because I was already sort of on the outs,” Morris says now. “I’m not backtracking what I said, I just never said that.”
“I live in Nashville and I work with all my same friends,” the musician continues. “It would be strange to be like: ‘This music isn’t me anymore.’ That makes me feel like I’m shitting on the music I’ve already put out, and that’s not how I feel at all.” And though her new album does feature a bit of writing from Jack Antonoff (the in-demand writer and producer who’s recently worked with Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, and The Chicks), Morris maintains that it’s still a country album: “If you dive deep enough, or if you just listen to the album, it’s very clear that I haven’t left anything behind.”
