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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Maren Morris celebrates major milestone after coming out and calling out 'toxic' country music community
Maren Morris has celebrated her first-ever Pride since officially coming out as bisexual. In video obtained exclusively by Morris rejoices over the milestone during her performance at Outloud Music Festival last week. 'My name is Maren Morris, and this is my first Pride!' she declares, sparking rapturous cheer from the crowd. Morris, 35, came out as bisexual last June, announcing to Instagram followers that she was 'Happy to be the B in LGBTQ +, happy pride!' On Friday, the country singer was one of the headliners kicking off Pride Month at Outloud Festival, an LGBTQ+ music festival held in the heart of West Hollywood. Morris continued to revel in the moment with behind-the-scenes snaps from her epic show. 'performing at my first Pride since I came out last summer and @wehopride couldn't have been a more welcoming party. happy Pride month,' she captioned the Instagram post, uploaded over the weekend. Fans praised Morris in the comments, with one thanking her for leaving a positive impact on their family. 'Thank you for making my kiddo feel comfortable in their true selves,' one posted. 'I didn't know you came out! Loved you before & love you now even more!' another wrote. 'Welcome to the fam!!' another gushed. Lance Bass chimed in as well: 'Loved it!' he raved. Morris was previously married to fellow country crooner Ryan Hurd, and they share five-year-old son Hayes Andrew Hurd together. The Girl singer recently said she 'always knew' she was attracted to both men and women but held back from ever going public with it. 'I've always known that I am attracted to men and women,' she told The Zoe Report last month. 'I think because I've been in straight relationships the last 15 years of my life, which has been consumed by my music career and living in Nashville, I never felt brave enough to talk about it.' In June 2024, however, she finally overcame that fear. 'That was just a facet of me that I didn't think I wanted private anymore. I wanted to be able to connect with my fans and my queer community,' she said. 'Especially in a time where you're in this free-for-all post-divorce reckoning, community has been so necessary for me and life-saving. Being honest and being vulnerable is the only way that you find community.' Maren's personal revelation comes over a year after she declared she was leaving the 'toxic' world of country music. The Middle singer told the New York Times' Popcast podcast back in September 2023 she felt 'like l have to absorb and explain people's bad behaviors and laugh it off.' Morris recently said she 'always knew' she was attracted to both men and women but held herself back from ever going public with it The hitmaker added, 'I just couldn't do that after 2020 particularly. I've changed. A lot of things changed about me that year.' 'I don't want to say goodbye, but I really cannot participate in the really toxic arms of this institution anymore,' she said. She also told the Los Angeles Times: 'I thought I'd like to burn it to the ground and start over. But it's burning itself down without my help.' But Maren has since clarified she 'never said she was leaving country music' in a recent interview with The Guardian. Maren called the headline of the LA Times article - which was titled 'Maren Morris is getting the hell out of country music: "I've said everything I can say"' - 'really unfortunate.' 'I never said I'm leaving country music, because that's not really how I feel at all,' she calmly told the publication. 'You hear country music on this album. 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. She said the article 'caused a ton of unnecessary drama for me from that community because I was already sort of on the outs. I'm not backtracking what I said, I just never said that.' The singer, who has been a Nashville resident for 12 years, added 'it's not going to be some tussle that's going to make me change my address.' Though she moved label divisions, no longer does the country radio circuit, and doesn't submit her music to the Country Music Awards or the Academy of Country Music Awards, the singer still works with all the same people. 'It would be strange to be like: "This music isn't me anymore,"' she explained. '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 'The fans that I've made and the communities those fans have made through being a fan of my music is so important to me,' she added, 'so to ever come out of my mouth saying: "I'm leaving you behind" – I'd never be so reckless and stupid.' Regarding her new album Dreamsicle, the singer said: 'If you dive deep enough, or if you just listen to the album, it's very clear that I haven't left anything behind.'
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
A-list country star reveals she unintentionally plagiarized Dolly Parton's biggest hit
Maren Morris admits she accidentally lifted multiple elements from Dolly Parton 's 1980 classic 9 to 5 for her own track. The Grammy-winning artist, 35, explained what had happened - and how Parton, again reaffirmed why she's one of the most beloved figures in show business - while appearing on the Zach Sang Show. 'I think that's, like, any songwriter's worst fear is unintentionally being on top of a melody that already exists and, you know, it happens more than you think,' the Grammy-winning artist said. She added: 'I think when I write with so many different people - and play the song so many times for loved ones before it ever gets into the public - There's always, like, checks and balances.' The country music artist said that extended collaborations produce 'checks and balances' and the extra experts in the room can help determine when a melody 'is a little bit too close to [another] song. Morris explained the situation that stemmed from the 2019 release of her track All My Favorite People, which also featured Brothers Osborne, as she ultimately felt it sounded too much like Dolly Parton's 1980 hit 9 to 5. 'There's a song on my second record called All My Favorite People - and I remember it was like two weeks till the record was out - and my mom was actually the one that was like, "I kind of noticed the verse/melody, sounds a little bit like 9 to 5,"' Morris said. All My Favorite People was co-written by Morris's ex-husband Ryan Hurd, who she parted ways with last year; and Grammy-nominated songwriter Mikey Reaves. The track was produced by Morris and the late music producer busbee (whose full name was Michael James Ryan) who died in September of 2019 at the age of 43. The Middle singer said her 'stomach dropped' when her mother told her she felt that there were noticeable similarities between her track and the Parton staple. 'She was genuinely trying to give me a heads up,' Morris said, 'and I listened to it immediately.' The Bones singer said that at that point she compared the songs and realized they sounded alike. Morris said she told Parton about her concern about the similarities, but the Jolene artist couldn't have been sweeter. Morris said that 'it was close enough' that she felt awful about what had happened - and was looking for a way to reach out to Parton's camp and offer her a songwriting credit on the track (which was not released as a single). 'I remember, like, writing something to her,' Morris said of Parton. Morris said Parton told her, 'Oh, my gosh, honey, you're all good,' adding that she didn't take any money but 'would have made something' had she pursued a legal settlement. The My Church artist added that Parton extended a courtesy to her that many of their peers would not have, as 'a lot of other artists are litigious' and would wait for the song to make as much money as possible before pursuing litigation. 'It's just it's such a nightmare for songwriters, who are already like, also so underpaid,' the Circles Around This Town singer added. Morris said she and Parton have since worked together.
South China Morning Post
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Country star Maren Morris talks about Dreamsicle, and why it is more than a divorce album
When country music star Maren Morris voiced support for the LBGTQ community, she thought she was doing it as an ally. She did not realise it at the time, but she was speaking up for herself, too. Advertisement 'I just maybe, internally, hadn't had the bravery to go there in myself, and say the words out loud,' said Morris, who recently came out as bisexual 'When you spend the majority of your life in straight relationships and you haven't explored that part of yourself … is now the right time for me to tell everyone [that] while I'm married, 'Hi, I'm also attracted to women'?' The Grammy winner, who has also stood in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and with immigrants, has experienced drastic life changes throughout the past year, including her divorce from singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd. These experiences shaped Dreamsicle, her fourth studio album, which is out now. 'There's a freedom that I've found in this album that's a new version of what I thought I had,' Morris explained. 'It's just more wise and lived in. And maybe part of that's just like being in your thirties – you just don't care as much.'
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Maren Morris hails Beyonce's 'great' impact on country music
Maren Morris thinks Beyonce has had a "great" impact on country music. The 35-year-old singer loves seeing mainstream stars embrace country music and Maren has admitted to being a big fan of Beyonce's 'Cowboy Carter' album, which she released in 2024. Speaking to the Observer newspaper, Maren explained: "It's great when people come in and obviously have such a deep respect for the lore and the roots of country music, which people of colour started. "Beyonce telling the history of that in a correct way was so important." Maren believes some critics of the recent trend have overlooked the evolution of country music. The 'My Church' hitmaker - who was married to country music star Ryan Hurd from 2018 until 2024 - said: "It's like, do people remember that that happened? That listen to mainstream country music now? We've been doing this for a very long time. Or at least, really bad*** artists have." Maren also hailed music icons Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton as "real outlaws". The award-winning star explained: "These people are famous for this long and this globally for a reason, and it's not just because they're from the south. It's because they have an identity and they stand up for the marginalised. They were real outlaws. "If there's any crisis [in country music], I think it's that the people that have an issue with any of that forget that their heroes were talking about that stuff before they were born. "I hope [audiences] hear themselves in it, whether it's a past self or who they want to be." Maren previously confessed to being wowed by Beyonce's country music. The singer is impressed that Beyonce has been able to make such a seamless transition between different musical genres. Maren - whose music is rooted in the country genre - told E! News: "I feel like she's always been genre-less, but I think the leaning into country elements and sort of reclaiming country music back to black people because they created the genre is such a statement. "Rhiannon Giddens playing banjo on 'Texas Hold 'Em', which is such an amazing statement in itself."
The Guardian
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Maren Morris: ‘I never said I'm leaving country music'
The year 2023 was a tough one for Maren Morris. The country singer, then 33, reached the end of her tour for her third studio album, Humble Quest, and the end of her rope with the conservative politics of country music industry. Her marriage to fellow country singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd, with whom she shares a young son, fell apart. That summer, her future professional life in question and her personal life imploding, she found herself in the UK touring with the Chicks – three fellow trailblazing, outspoken female artists in a male-oriented music scene who, 20 years earlier, got infamously blacklisted from country radio for daring to criticize George W Bush during a concert at Shepherd's Bush. 'It couldn't have been a better musical hero backdrop for everything in my life crumbling,' Morris, a five-time Country Music Association Awards winner for such hits as The Bones, tells me in early April. The Chicks, of course, spun the hard-earned wisdom of the outsider's high road into Grammy gold with 2006's Taking the Long Way, an album of righteous anger burned to peace. 'Any woman who has faced any sort of professional adversity or feeling that betrayal from a community – they just have the perfect album and attitude for it,' says Morris, with typical forthrightness. Morris, too, went her own way that summer. By September, the Texas native – one of the few big country stars willing to call out peers for, say, anti-trans comments, excusing away a video of Morgan Wallen saying the N-word, or general refusal to reckon with racism, homophobia and sexism in Nashville – publicly distanced herself from the industry where she started a decade earlier as a scrappy songwriter. 'I thought I'd like to burn it to the ground and start over,' she told the Los Angeles Times. 'But it's burning itself down without my help.' She released the two-track EP The Bridge, signifying her move to Columbia from the label's Nashville division, with a music video that seemed to call out the racial vigilantism suggested by country star Jason Aldean's Try That in a Small Town. A month later, she filed for divorce from Hurd after five years of marriage. Two years of turmoil later, at 35, Morris can see a clearer picture. 'I tried everything I could to make that part of myself work,' she says of her marriage. 'I tried everything I could to make the part of myself within mainstream country work. And I think I was just growing apart from all of it.' Things are much brighter these days, though we have escaped the scorching afternoon sun at Coachella's record-hot first weekend for an air-conditioned trailer to discuss what emerged from the ashes: Dreamsicle, a honey-hued album of reckoning and healing, out this week. In person, Morris is poised and thoughtful, more circumspect than her past burn-it-down comments would suggest. True to her decade-plus career blurring the line between country and pop, she is dressed somewhere between Nashville and California – crochet halter top, denim cut-offs, cowboy boots, multicolor silk headscarf set. She's in town for some coveted Coachella guest spots – revisiting her breakout country hit My Church with Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performing her feature on Zedd's inescapable 2018 party staple The Middle. And also, of course, to take in some wide-ranging sets, from Clairo to Charli xcx – with whom she shares, if nothing else, a career-long interest in the catharsis that is being loud while driving fast; her Grammy-winning single My Church, released in 2016, likened belting in the car to a religious experience, neatly twisting Nashville's penchant for nostalgic faith into secular gospel. As a debut, My Church evinced Morris's independent streak, though she came up through the country music system. Raised on 90s female country-pop stars such as Shania Twain, the Chicks and LeAnn Rimes, she had no other plan than to become a singer. Relentless touring as a teen around the state, plus failed auditions for nearly every talent show – American Idol, The Voice, America's Got Talent, Nashville Star – cemented her country-pop sensibility and vocal chops, if not a route out of Texas. On the advice of Kacey Musgraves, a friend from the Texas honky-tonk circuit, Morris moved to Nashville in 2013 to work as a songwriter for the likes of Kelly Clarkson; she met Hurd the same year, when they co-wrote Last Turn Home for Tim McGraw. This was the height of so-called 'bro country', the prevalent sound of Solo cups, tailgates, cut-off jeans and nameless girls, almost all performed by white male artists occasionally inflected by hip-hop. As an aspiring solo artist, Morris was 'deeply respectful to the machine' of Nashville, she told the New York Times Popcast in 2023. Her 2016 debut, Hero, emerged out of a period of questioning who she was writing for, then penning tracks for herself and posting them on Spotify, where she gained enough traction that country's gatekeepers scrambled to sign her. Hero immediately shot to No 1 on the country charts and solidified Morris's precarious outsider-insider status as a new type of Nashville artist – musically voracious, open-minded and social media-literate, where she was unwilling to mince words on racial justice, abortion rights or respect for queer people. With a chameleonic and expansive voice, able to sustain torrential belt, delicate falsetto and a sharp turn of phrase, Morris moved seamlessly between genres and savvy collaborations, duetting with Taylor Swift, Alicia Keys, Hozier, Brothers Osborne and EDM artist Zedd – not to mention the Highwomen, a supergroup with Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires and Natalie Hemby that served as a triumphant, rootsy rebuttal to the country manosphere. Dreamsicle has that all in the rearview, instead preoccupied with present-tense mess given a rose-gold tint familiar to Morris's ouevre. The album, named for the 'perfectly fickle' sweet treat that definitionally cannot last, builds on her longstanding pop-lite sensibilities and stable of collaborators – Greg Kurstin, Jack Antonoff and Julia Michaels, among others – with the roving focus and intensity of someone in the thick of a breakup, broadly construed. 'I'm not shying away from the elements of divorce on the record, but I think it's so much bigger than that,' she says, lightly buffeted by the bass of Coachella's early sets. 'That's a part of me and will be forever, but it's not a defining characteristic of me. It's how you put yourself back together.' Dreamsicle skips through those stops and starts – there is getting by with the help of your friends (grand bouquet), the awkwardness of the morning after with someone new (bed no breakfast), the moment of devastating clarity (this is how a woman leaves), the horniness of the newly liberated (push me over), and the overwhelmed freak-out (cut!). What there is not is any direct jab at Hurd, with whom she co-parents their five-year-old son, Hayes, in Nashville. 'We had this amazing love and we do in a different way now,' she says with the tranquility of the therapized. 'Now we're partners in a different sense. We have to be really good, on the same page as much as we can, as co-parents.' Morris also seems intent on distancing herself from the story distancing herself from country music, describing the initial LA Times headline – 'Maren Morris is getting the hell out of country music: 'I've said everything I can say'' – as 'really unfortunate'. 'I never said I'm leaving country music, because that's not really how I feel at all,' she explains calmly. 'You hear country music on this album. 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.' The story 'caused a ton of unnecessary drama for me from that community because I was already sort of on the outs. I'm not backtracking what I said, I just never said that,' she adds, noting that she's lived in Nashville for 12 years – 'it's not going to be some tussle that's going to make me change my address.' Yes, she moved label divisions, no longer does the country radio circuit, nor submits her music to the CMA or ACM awards, but 'I live in Nashville and I work with all my same friends,' she says. '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.' 'The fans that I've made and the communities those fans have made through being a fan of my music is so important to me,' she continues, 'so to ever come out of my mouth saying: 'I'm leaving you behind' – I'd never be so reckless and stupid.' When I ask what she wished the conversation would have been, a representative interjects – the focus, it's clear, is onwards and upwards. But Morris clarifies that that was just two years ago, 'very much inside the storm that was still brewing' v the 'more zoomed-out, healed phase' now. 'If you dive deep enough, or if you just listen to the album, it's very clear that I haven't left anything behind.' Morris may not be up for directly challenging Nashville today, but she is clear on the values it should have, and what history is remembered. We're in the Cowboy Carter era, where pre-existing mainstream stars from Beyoncé to Chappell Roan, Lana Del Rey to Post Malone, are taking on steel guitars and banjos. 'It's great when people come in and obviously have such a deep respect for the lore and the roots of country music, which people of color started,' Morris says. 'Beyoncé telling the history of that in a correct way was so important.' Cowboy Carter's collaborators, including Shaboozey, Rhiannon Giddens, Linda Martell, Brittney Spencer, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and others, 'felt like this amazing melting pot of country music', she adds. 'That's what it should be.' For a genre, and a country, often so focused on invoking a fictional past, Morris offers a different tradition – the many collaborations between Ray Charles and Nelson, a favorite of hers growing up in Texas and evidence of country music's multi-racial, genre-porous past. 'It's like, do people remember that that happened? That listen to mainstream country music now?' she wonders. 'We've been doing this for a very long time. Or at least, really badass artists have.' She offers others – Kris Kristofferson, an army man who advocated for veterans' aid; Johnny Cash, performing for incarcerated people; Parton's Imagination Library and status as a gay icon. 'These people are famous for this long and this globally for a reason, and it's not just because they're from the south,' she says. 'It's because they have an identity and they stand up for the marginalized. They were real outlaws. 'If there's any crisis [in country music], I think it's that the people that have an issue with any of that forget that their heroes were talking about that stuff before they were born.' And with that, along with one more nod to an album of past heartache – 'I hope [audiences] hear themselves in it, whether it's a past self or who they want to be,' she says – we're out of trailer, back into the light. Dreamsicle is out now
