Maren Morris made more than a few ripples recently in a series of interviews when she announced she was stepping away from the country music industry and seeking to broaden her musical horizons.
Some people interpreted her statement as she was leaving country music altogether. But Morris has since then clarified things, saying she is not turning her back on country music itself. She’s just stepping outside of country music’s system of releasing and promoting music.
It’s a function of a key conclusion that Morris reached: She shouldn’t limit herself to funneling her music through any one format, which in this case is country.
“I by no means want to act like I’m walking away (from country) forever,” Morris said in a recent interview. “I think I’ve said many times and reiterated that that’s the music that I grew up on, and that’s how I learned to write songs, truly, (was) listening to those country songwriters.
Credit: Ashley Osborn
Credit: Ashley Osborn
“I feel like the music I’m making now just doesn’t have a ceiling on it,” she said. “Now I feel really free creatively, and that’s like the ultimate goal.”
How the creative freedom Morris is feeling will translate into her music will start to be apparent when she releases her next album. She has been busy writing and recording this year, working with a number of new co-writers and collaborators, she said. The first songs from this new chapter arrived in August via a five-song EP, “Intermission.”
Initially, Morris intended to have a new full-length album released well before “Intermission,” and she spent a good chunk of 2023 writing and recording with that goal in mind. But then her world changed with the divorce from her husband of five years, Ryan Hurd, and that impacted her plans for new music.
“I had a really almost finished project ready to be mixed and released, and I was proud of it. But also in the same fell swoop my personal life imploded,” Morris said. “I was just dealing with the shrapnel of that, and when I would go back and listen to the songs that I had almost finished on this project I was just so dissociated from them. And it’s not the songs themselves or, you know, the quality of them.
“I think just who I was when I was writing; it was just such a checked-out person. So listening to them was actually really painful and not in a way that was productive for me. Sometimes you’re like ‘OK, even if these songs rip your heart out, put them out anyway because you can still connect with people over them.’ I didn’t feel that way.”
Morris doesn’t rule out the possibility that the shelved album may get released in some form someday.
“Maybe at some point I will put those songs out when I’ve processed this a little bit more,” she said. “But I’m right now on the other side of this really big trauma, and writing (about) my healing process, like, in real time has been a lot more helpful to me than dwelling on songs that I’m not emotionally connected to at this point in my life.”
Morris is clearly excited about the songs she has been writing this year, and it’s apparent in how she described the tone of the next album that she is getting to a better place emotionally. She compared it to her second album, the 2019 release “Girl,” in the sense that there are country elements to the newest songs, but they’re also sonically ambitious and stylistically diverse.
“I feel like this one is in a similar vein of just, like, all over the place, which maybe I always am,” Morris said. “But I would say the content of the songs, like the lyrical content, is the best, most succinct songwriting of that craft I have done thus far, I think, because I just don’t second-guess myself as much anymore. I don’t need to prove myself as a writer anymore.
“I wouldn’t call it, like, a divorce project, but it touches on my life, of course,” she said. “I think it’s mostly, it’s very forward-facing and, you know, kind of single liberation facing.”
Morris declined to elaborate further on her divorce or the issues that caused her split with Hurd. Instead, she’s focused on mapping out her future — as a music artist, as a boss, as a mother (she had a son, Hayes Andrew, with Hurd in 2000), daughter and friend — and getting better in all areas of her life and her art.
And she’s excited to get back on tour. This run, which began in the summer, figures to be unlike any Morris has done on tour before, with fans playing a direct role in what songs get performed on a given night.
“We’re asking fans to send their ideal set list in and send request songs in,” she said. “So we want to keep it really fresh each night and not do the same setlist every day. So it keeps my band and I on our toes, and it also just feels like the fans at whatever city/show they’re in get a really unique setlist.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Maren Morris opens for Pink
7:30 p.m. Thursday. $130-$364. State Farm Arena, 1 State Farm Drive, Atlanta. statefarmarena.com.
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