Maren Morris has done her best to change country music from the inside, but she’s tired of fighting a losing battle — and she’s ready to move on. “I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over,” Morris, 33, said of country music in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published on Friday, September 15.
“But it’s burning itself down without my help.” Morris has long advocated for greater diversity in the genre, which has traditionally been a branch of the music industry dominated by white male heterosexual artists. “But the stories going on within country music right now, I’ve tried to avoid a lot of it at all costs,” she explained, noting that she’s benefitted from the dominant system as well. “I feel very, very distanced from it.”
Her new songs “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here” — released on Friday as an EP called The Bridge — are about her decision to leave country music behind. “If you truly love this type of music and you start to see problems arise, it needs to be criticized. Anything this popular should be scrutinized if we want to see progress,” she said. “But I’ve kind of said everything I can say.”