Maren Morris: Singer-Songwriter

Growing up in Texas, the twang of country songs sparked Maren Morris’s love affair with music. The Chicks lived one town over. Country played in the salon where Maren’s mother was a hairdresser, a place Maren essentially grew up in. That salon was also where she learned that for women, things are often multi-dimensional. Her mother wasn’t just doing hair. She was making someone beautiful, and sitting with them for hours listening, almost as a therapist. 

“I think that’s where I learned to listen, and how I came to love writing songs, and be a character outside my own point of view. I would hear other people’s stories and then be inspired to write about them and pretend it was me.”

When Maren was nine years old, she was obsessed with LeAnn Rimes, who had a record deal and a number-one song at just fourteen years old. At ten, Maren started performing. By the time she was in her early twenties, she moved to Nashville and was co-writing songs with superstars like Tim McGraw and Kelly Clarkson. Back then, she was content with being behind the scenes.

“I had this insecurity around getting onstage,” she said. “It’s scary to put your songs and your face and your opinion out there. It took me a few years to get up the courage to do it.”

Now Maren is thirty-four. She’s won a slew of awards, including a Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance. But she says she’s still finding her lyrical style and voice. She just released a new EP called Intermission. It fearlessly steps away from the genre she started in to a “genre-less” music that blends country, rock, pop, and R&B into a sound all her own. It’s hard to label, she says, “because I think I’m all of those musical styles because I’m inspired by them.”

What hasn’t changed is that many of Maren’s songs celebrate female strength, and empower women through music. In that regard, Maren says she’s cut from the same cloth as her mother. “We’re both stubborn, fiery, prideful Texas women.”

Music was Maren’s life, her identity. Until it wasn’t. When the pandemic hit, shows and tours stopped. At the same time, she became a mother, which meant a pullback from work to care for a newborn.

“I was without music in that moment. All that I had known was being a performer. Being onstage and applause—that was my validation as a person. But I realized as much as I love it, music is an outlet. It’s not what makes me Maren, what makes me worthy and loveable. And that was a hard lesson, to strip my identity from it and know that I’m a good person and friend, a good mom and daughter and sister.”

That stripping down to the foundations made Maren feel more liberated in her songwriting. She understood that she’s already proven everything to herself that she needs to. Now, music is about personal growth.

“I’m at a place where I can hold a boundary for myself, and do what makes me excited and inspired.” She knows it means she might not be beloved by everyone. “But if you focus on being authentic to yourself and your art, there will be an audience that will stick with you and grow with you.”