ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE?

Danielle Taylor, writing in American Songwriter suggests

Maren Morris might be heading

ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE

Norman Warwick wonders why

I made  note of her name when Bob Harris was playing her early work on his BBC 2 Radio country music programme, but as things do in your sixties it drifted away from me before I had chance to buy any of stu and gradually I lost track of her career. Now I learn from an article by Danielle Taylor in American Songwriter that singer-writer Maren Morris has begun to travel down sidetracks and detours

After bursting on to the country scene some while ago, with a handful of albums of feisty songs, Maren Morris  (LEFT) is ready to kick off a new chapter of her career:

Danielle Taylor says Mare´s departure from the country music genrewas staped official by leaving Columbia Nashville and signing on to the label’s main roster,

On Friday (September 15th, she  released two tracks titled “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here” — complete with a pair of evocative music videos — under the EP title The Bridge

Although Morris is still in the process of following up her 2022 album Humble Quest, she wanted these two tracks to shine in their own right, as she revealed in a recent social media post.. The Bridge, she wrote, “honours where I’ve been and but also feels like a forward step into the sun.”

In a press release, Morris said that the two news songs on The Bridge “are incredibly key to my next step because they express a very righteously angry and liberating phase of my life these last couple of years but also how my navigation is finally pointing towards the future, whatever that may be or sound like. HonoUring where I’ve been and what I’ve achieved in country music, but also freely moving forward.”

“The Tree” was produced by Greg Kurstin, and “Get the Hell Out of Here” was produced by Jack Antonoff.

The accompanying music videos were directed by Jason Lester. In both, Morris is pictured in a stylized small town singing the poignant tracks as the storefronts hang going-out-of-business signs. When she teased the clip, some took it as a possible commentary on Jason Aldean’s polarizing “Try That in a Small Town.”

In a newly published interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris said, “After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display. It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic. All these things were being celebrated, and it was weirdly dovetailing with this hyper-masculine branch of country music. I call it butt rock.”

With “The Tree,” (SEE LYRIC PAGE, RIGHT) it’s clear Morris feels like she needs to “take a step back,” as she also revealed in the interview: “The way I grew up was so wrapped in country music, and the way I write songs is very lyrically structured in the Nashville way of doing things. But I think I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we’ll market it.”

“The last few records, that’s always been in the back of my mind: Will this work in the country music universe?” she continued. “Obviously, being one of the few women that had any success on country radio, everything you do is looked at under a microscope. You’re scrutinized more than your male peers, even when you’re doing well. So I’ve had to clear all of that out of my head this year and just write songs. A lot of the drama within the community, I’ve chosen to step outside out of it.”

Morris also declared that her new EP The Bridge is one of the many metaphors she uses in daydreaming a path departing the world of the country music industry.

In a newly published interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris elaborated on her choice: “I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over, but it’s burning itself down without my help.”

When asked about seeking distance from the genre, she told the LA Times, “I had to take a step back. The way I grew up was so wrapped in country music, and the way I write songs is very lyrically structured in the Nashville way of doing things. But I think I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we’ll market it. “

“The last few records, that’s always been in the back of my mind: Will this work in the country music universe?” she continued. “Obviously, being one of the few women that had any success on country radio, everything you do is looked at under a microscope. You’re scrutinized more than your male peers, even when you’re doing well. So I’ve had to clear all of that out of my head this year and just write songs. A lot of the drama within the community, I’ve chosen to step outside out of it.”

The artist told the publication that she absolutely admires Taylor Swift‘s ability to move seamlessly into another style of music. “She’s been such a great friend over the years and has been really helpful in ways she probably doesn’t even realize in conversations I’ve had with her about everything you and I have been talking about.”

In the new music videos for the “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here,” which were directed by Jason Lester, Morris wanders through a stylized small town singing the poignant tracks as storefronts hang going-out-of-business signs — further signifying her departure from the genre in which she got her start.