If you’re gonna walk away from country music, you better know what you’re walking into.
Maren Morris didn’t just pack up and go. Before she made the jump to pop and torched bridges that were already halfway crumbling, she called the women who’d lived through the fallout: Taylor Swift and The Chicks.
“I couldn’t have imagined a better support system,” Morris said during a recent TalkShopLive stream, as reported by People. “It can feel really isolating sometimes.”
And yeah—it should. Leaving the genre that gave you your start is no small thing, especially when it’s the same genre that handed you a Grammy for “My Church,” but also made it clear that calling out bad behavior comes with a cost.
So Morris went to the source. Taylor Swift, who ghosted country on her own terms in 2014 with 1989 and never looked back. And The Chicks—who didn’t leave so much as get thrown out after daring to speak their minds about President Bush in 2003 and spending the next two decades as cautionary tales for every other outspoken woman in a rhinestone jacket.
Maren saw the writing on the wall. Then she lit a match.
She’s been open about the why. In a 2023 Los Angeles Times interview, she said she needed to step away from a genre that was eating at her mental health. “I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over,” she said at the time, “but it’s burning itself down without my help.”
In Variety, she doubled down: “I know I’ve been successful, but I think at a moral cost. I couldn’t keep doing the same song and dance.”
She didn’t just leave country—she left Columbia Nashville, her country-specific label, and jumped over to Columbia Records. Different team, different sound, the same girl from Texas who’s not pretending to be anything she’s not.
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And yet, she’s not out here saying she’s done with the genre forever.
“I don’t consider myself an expat of country music,” she told People. “There’s so many amazing people here making music that matters. I’m a piece of this town, and I want to make it better.”
It’s messy. But that’s what makes it honest.
Her new album Dreamsicle drops May 9. It’s her first full-length project since filing for divorce from fellow songwriter Ryan Hurd. She’s already said it’s not about making villains out of anyone—just trying to heal her own heart. And maybe leave enough truth on the table to help someone else do the same.
“I don’t think I have to choose [genres],” Morris said. “I just write it and it goes where it goes.”
Sometimes, that road leads you out of Nashville. Sometimes, it leads you right back in with your head held higher than before.
Either way, it sure as hell doesn’t start without picking up the phone and asking the women who’ve been burned and kept walking.
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