Marian Keyes has sold 35 million books. She still thinks she's 'rubbish'
If you've read Grown Ups, Marian Keyes' 17th novel, you'll know exactly where the bestselling author is when I speak to her over Zoom one sunny April morning.
'In the first chapter of that book they're all away at a hotel,' she says excitedly, when I tell her I'm a huge fan of hers, and that book in particular. 'And that's where I am!' She pivots the camera so I can see the room she is in. 'My family and I come here every year, just like the family in the book.'
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Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘You need to let people know where you stand': Maren Morris on being country music's most outspoken star
'Sitting on the fence feels good between my legs' sings Maren Morris on Push Me Over, the best song on the country star's new album Dreamsicle. Co-written and produced by the queer pop band MUNA, the song is a flirtatious statement of intent for Morris, who publicly came out as bisexual last June. For someone who's made a career out of righteously aggravating country music's conservative base, it's also typically provocative. Singing so slyly about same-sex lust in Nashville, the heart of the country music establishment, where Christian values still reign supreme: does it still feel taboo? 'I mean, less so than it used to. But maybe that's just because I've removed myself a bit from the machine of all that,' says Morris from her home in Nashville. Despite the assumptions of outside onlookers, Nashville is more than just the 'mechanism of mainstream country music,' the 35-year-old says. 'It is that, but there's also so much diversity here and it's always been that way. It's a progressive dot in the middle of a really conservative state, and it has to be because it's a music town. It has to lend itself to open-minded ideals, because we're making music here and we're empaths and we feel deeply.' It's why Morris has never left the city, even if country music's more conservative forces have tried hard to excommunicate her. 'There's a heartbeat here that's very free and accepts people, and that's why I've chosen to remain here and make this my home. I have my community here that I love, but I also want to help make it better and redefine what people maybe think of the South or of country music.' The same sentiment that seeps through Chappell Roan's The Giver, her '90s-flecked country hit about sapphic generosity, lives in Morris' Push Me Over. More than just a lavender moment for mainstream country, it's country outcasts staking their territory. We're as country as Mr All-American Blue Jeans, they seem to be saying, you can't tell us we don't belong. 'I'm such a fan [of Chappell] and I think what she's advocating for and doing musically is so important,' says Morris. 'You just know when you're watching a true artist be themselves, fully be themselves, and not follow a script or a paradigm. I don't want perfection from the artists I love; I want real, I want authenticity, and she's definitely that.' I'm speaking to Morris over Zoom, but with some foresight I might've caught her in person. Last month I noticed a Reddit commenter wonder aloud if they'd really just spotted Morris in Sydney. 'Yeah, that was me, I was on vacation,' Morris laughs. 'I had a week off and I was like, I really want to have a little adventure before all the tours and album stuff kicks in. I'd always wanted to go to Sydney and just explore, be a random person. The only plan on the schedule was to get a tattoo.' She lifts her forearm to show me the martini glass inked there by Sydney tattooist, Lauren Winzer. In a recent interview, Morris had mentioned it was her favourite drink. 'It is now. It's my 30-something cocktail. The dirtier, the better.' The local souvenir, one she hopes to add to when she returns on tour next summer, is also a symbol of her lively new era. Dreamsicle – her first album since her divorce from longtime partner, country singer Ryan Hurd, with whom she shares a five-year-old son – finds Morris blending her pop sensibilities with her country DNA. For each Push Me Over, there's an emotional barnstormer like This is How a Woman Leaves, written with Madi Diaz. (The song ends on a pure country couplet: 'You have the nerve to ask why I'm not crying/ I did all my crying lying next to you'.) 'They're songs tackling all these feelings of liberation – sexual, personal, vulnerable, angry,' says Morris. 'That's kind of the through line of this record, it's someone in a mess finding themselves and finding their power again.' A decade since her major label breakout, 2016's Hero, Morris remains one of country music's more intriguing figures, at once both insider and outsider. A Texan native, she started playing country fairs and rodeo circuits when she was 10 years old. After flunking at every reality TV singing competition (American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Voice, et al), she eventually made the move to Nashville and became a hired gun in the songwriting machine, before becoming a star in her own right with Hero 's smashes My Church and '80s Mercedes, and 2018's crossover EDM hit The Middle with Zedd. In the intervening years, she also became one of country's loudest progressive voices, speaking out often and unequivocally against racism, misogyny and homophobia in its ranks. (In one memorable instance, responding to transphobic comments from Brittany Aldean – the wife of country star, Jason – she labelled her 'Insurrectionist Barbie'.) Loading In an interview with New York Times ′ Popcast in 2023, Morris decried an ugly strain of 'hatefulness' in country music at the time, a period dominated by MAGA-fied culture wars around Jason Aldean's Try That In a Small Town, Oliver Anthony's Rich Men North of Richmond, and Morgan Wallen's post-slur comeback. That same year she told the Los Angeles Times she'd 'take a step back' from the country industry amid conservative backlash and death threats. With some dust settled, does country feel less hateful now? 'I mean, I'm so out of the loop. But the people I hang around with here in Nashville and make music with are my best friends for a reason,' says Morris. The backlash just let her know who's really onside, anyway. 'I've always been rebellious and risky, and it's totally fine if people don't get it, not everyone is supposed to. Of course, you're going to lose some people along the way, that's life. But you need to let people know where you stand. 'That's why the fan base I do have is so diverse and safe,' she adds. 'It's because I've stuck my neck out for them and vice versa. It's not been me just towing the line and keeping my mouth shut to keep coins in my pocket. I really believe in what I'm saying and what I'm writing, and I think that's only been a benefit to my work. I've just never had it in me to be a fence-sitter.' Pun completely unintended.
The Age
23-05-2025
- The Age
‘You need to let people know where you stand': Maren Morris on being country music's most outspoken star
'Sitting on the fence feels good between my legs' sings Maren Morris on Push Me Over, the best song on the country star's new album Dreamsicle. Co-written and produced by the queer pop band MUNA, the song is a flirtatious statement of intent for Morris, who publicly came out as bisexual last June. For someone who's made a career out of righteously aggravating country music's conservative base, it's also typically provocative. Singing so slyly about same-sex lust in Nashville, the heart of the country music establishment, where Christian values still reign supreme: does it still feel taboo? 'I mean, less so than it used to. But maybe that's just because I've removed myself a bit from the machine of all that,' says Morris from her home in Nashville. Despite the assumptions of outside onlookers, Nashville is more than just the 'mechanism of mainstream country music,' the 35-year-old says. 'It is that, but there's also so much diversity here and it's always been that way. It's a progressive dot in the middle of a really conservative state, and it has to be because it's a music town. It has to lend itself to open-minded ideals, because we're making music here and we're empaths and we feel deeply.' It's why Morris has never left the city, even if country music's more conservative forces have tried hard to excommunicate her. 'There's a heartbeat here that's very free and accepts people, and that's why I've chosen to remain here and make this my home. I have my community here that I love, but I also want to help make it better and redefine what people maybe think of the South or of country music.' The same sentiment that seeps through Chappell Roan's The Giver, her '90s-flecked country hit about sapphic generosity, lives in Morris' Push Me Over. More than just a lavender moment for mainstream country, it's country outcasts staking their territory. We're as country as Mr All-American Blue Jeans, they seem to be saying, you can't tell us we don't belong. 'I'm such a fan [of Chappell] and I think what she's advocating for and doing musically is so important,' says Morris. 'You just know when you're watching a true artist be themselves, fully be themselves, and not follow a script or a paradigm. I don't want perfection from the artists I love; I want real, I want authenticity, and she's definitely that.' I'm speaking to Morris over Zoom, but with some foresight I might've caught her in person. Last month I noticed a Reddit commenter wonder aloud if they'd really just spotted Morris in Sydney. 'Yeah, that was me, I was on vacation,' Morris laughs. 'I had a week off and I was like, I really want to have a little adventure before all the tours and album stuff kicks in. I'd always wanted to go to Sydney and just explore, be a random person. The only plan on the schedule was to get a tattoo.' She lifts her forearm to show me the martini glass inked there by Sydney tattooist, Lauren Winzer. In a recent interview, Morris had mentioned it was her favourite drink. 'It is now. It's my 30-something cocktail. The dirtier, the better.' The local souvenir, one she hopes to add to when she returns on tour next summer, is also a symbol of her lively new era. Dreamsicle – her first album since her divorce from longtime partner, country singer Ryan Hurd, with whom she shares a five-year-old son – finds Morris blending her pop sensibilities with her country DNA. For each Push Me Over, there's an emotional barnstormer like This is How a Woman Leaves, written with Madi Diaz. (The song ends on a pure country couplet: 'You have the nerve to ask why I'm not crying/ I did all my crying lying next to you'.) 'They're songs tackling all these feelings of liberation – sexual, personal, vulnerable, angry,' says Morris. 'That's kind of the through line of this record, it's someone in a mess finding themselves and finding their power again.' A decade since her major label breakout, 2016's Hero, Morris remains one of country music's more intriguing figures, at once both insider and outsider. A Texan native, she started playing country fairs and rodeo circuits when she was 10 years old. After flunking at every reality TV singing competition (American Idol, America's Got Talent, The Voice, et al), she eventually made the move to Nashville and became a hired gun in the songwriting machine, before becoming a star in her own right with Hero 's smashes My Church and '80s Mercedes, and 2018's crossover EDM hit The Middle with Zedd. In the intervening years, she also became one of country's loudest progressive voices, speaking out often and unequivocally against racism, misogyny and homophobia in its ranks. (In one memorable instance, responding to transphobic comments from Brittany Aldean – the wife of country star, Jason – she labelled her 'Insurrectionist Barbie'.) Loading In an interview with New York Times ′ Popcast in 2023, Morris decried an ugly strain of 'hatefulness' in country music at the time, a period dominated by MAGA-fied culture wars around Jason Aldean's Try That In a Small Town, Oliver Anthony's Rich Men North of Richmond, and Morgan Wallen's post-slur comeback. That same year she told the Los Angeles Times she'd 'take a step back' from the country industry amid conservative backlash and death threats. With some dust settled, does country feel less hateful now? 'I mean, I'm so out of the loop. But the people I hang around with here in Nashville and make music with are my best friends for a reason,' says Morris. The backlash just let her know who's really onside, anyway. 'I've always been rebellious and risky, and it's totally fine if people don't get it, not everyone is supposed to. Of course, you're going to lose some people along the way, that's life. But you need to let people know where you stand. 'That's why the fan base I do have is so diverse and safe,' she adds. 'It's because I've stuck my neck out for them and vice versa. It's not been me just towing the line and keeping my mouth shut to keep coins in my pocket. I really believe in what I'm saying and what I'm writing, and I think that's only been a benefit to my work. I've just never had it in me to be a fence-sitter.' Pun completely unintended.
The Age
21-05-2025
- The Age
Good food, good craic as bestselling author Marian Keyes gets real
'I never saw any reason to hide it. I kind of thought, well, I was a 30-year-old woman and I was educated and I was middle class and all of those things,' she says. 'So if it could happen to me, it was probably happening to an awful lot of other people and if it's not been spoken about, nobody can get help.' After Keyes came out of rehab, she wrote her first novel, Watermelon. She has stayed sober and written books – all bestsellers – ever since. Life seemed good but, in 2009, completely out of the blue, the author experienced the onset of a debilitating four-year depression during which she barely got out of bed and suffered ongoing suicidal tendencies. It eventually lifted, which she attributes to time and the support of her loved ones. And hormone replacement therapy! Nothing is off the table at a Marian Keyes lunch. I asked her if she thought it was a great comfort to readers going through tough times to read about someone similarly afflicted and know they're not alone. She agreed. 'Every single one of us on earth, we think that bad things only happen to other people. It's a survival technique – but sooner or later, the terrible thing happens to us,' she says. 'You know, the spotlight of doom is above our head. There's such an endless list of awful ways for your life to be unbended. But most things are survivable; you can, you will be happy again. You can be happy again, in a different way. We can never go back to the person we were before the terrible thing. Back to your old self isn't really possible in big trauma, I think, but you're still there.' One of the things Keyes discovered, after the darkness had lifted, was her capacity for resilience. 'We only really discover the resilience when it's required, but we're given it at terrible times or difficult times, I think. Whatever loss there is, that kind of muscle of resilience is still available to us, maybe in a different form. We are stronger than we know, but it doesn't mean it's going to be pleasant. Feeling resilient doesn't mean that you're feeling good. No, in the storm, it means you're surviving.' Keyes is prolific on social media; her Instagram feed is a riot and includes candid photos of her family: mother ('Old Vumman'), four siblings and several nieces and nephews. They are a close family. Keyes and her husband Tony Baines ('Himself') have been married for 29 years. Earlier this year, she spoke about their inability to have children, saying she was at peace with it. 'We're fine now, you know, we're grand,' she said. 'I also felt like ... I'd been given so much by the universe, like I was given the ability to stop drinking alcoholically, and then I met this lovely man who was really, really nice to me, and then I got a job doing something that I was able to do when people were willing to kind of pay me for it. And I just think I thought, like nobody gets everything. 'But I feel like some kind of grace was afforded to me and my husband and we were just able to go, 'Let's focus on what we have rather than what we haven't.' You get what you get, and this is what I've got. And I'm absolutely grateful for my life.' We've been talking so much that we've hardly touched the food, which is light and delicious. The sun is refusing to come out. But I'm so engrossed in our conversation, which ranges from mental illness to lip liner, I stop noticing. Keyes revealed that she has become addicted to online personality quizzes – in particular, about the diagnosis du jour, ADHD. And after watching Andrew Scott in Ripley, she did several quizzes titled, 'Am I a psychopath?' (The answer was no.) 'I am very much self-diagnosed as (someone with ADHD). I've met a lovely woman who says she will diagnose it with a test. And I'm so scattered that I haven't got it together to go and do it – the proof is already there. I don't even need to do the test. If I'm too scatty to actually get it together to do it I should already be getting my green tick.' I asked her about My Favourite Mistake, which features a 48-year-old woman called Anna Walsh. At the start of the story, she jettisons her relationship, her job and her entire life in New York to go back to Ireland, without a plan of action. We discussed the phenomenon of older women increasingly deciding to upend their lives to run away and experience life on their own terms. When Keyes turned 60, she didn't run away but blocked out a year to pause her writing and go back to university to study design. 'The older I get, the more I realise that you can start again at any stage,' she says. 'Last year, I took a year off and I went back to college, just to do something that I had always wanted to do. And I think with better health care and longer life expectancy, women are far more vocal about what they expect from their lives than they used to be. 'I do think burnout is very real. Anna doesn't have children, but I often see it when the children are grown, the children have gone to university, that's it, and women are deciding, this is my time and I'm going to do all the things that I wanted to do when I was told I had to be doing other things. And I love it.' Lunch passed in a rush and Keyes' minder arrived to whisk her away. I stepped outside, suffused with the contentment you feel after a meal of good food and great 'craic', in Irish terms. Turning to take in one of the world's iconic views, I spotted a patch of blue. Like a Keyes novel – the clouds part, and the light returns.
