August 2019 | Rolling Stone | 37
The country-pop star on her new supergroup, posing for
‘Playboy,’ and her time as a Nashville songwriter
By BRIAN HIATTMaren Morris
Q&A
PHOTOGRAPH BY Nick Karp
I
N A WORLD where Lil
Nas X has an unbeatable
country smash, it’s hard
to blame the likes of Maren
Morris — who was performing
in Texas honky-tonks at the
age of 10 — for branching
out. In the wake of 2018’s
ubiquitous, super-poppy
Zedd collaboration “The
Middle,” Morris, 29, drifted
far from the twang of her
debut album on this year’s
Girl, delving into R&B and
pop, and even showing a
hint of reggae. But she also
just completed an altogether
rootsier album with her new
supergroup, the Highwomen
(with Brandi Carlile, Amanda
Shires, and Natalie Hemby) —
even if they weren’t sure the
experiment would work until
their sessions with producer
Dave Cobb. “It was so nice to
realize in the studio that we
all sound great together,” she
says. “We were joking that we
got married — and then got to
know each other.”
Everyone loves the line
“What’s your time machine/
Is it Springsteen or is it
‘Teenage Dream’?” from “A
Song for Everything.” How
did you come up with it?
I was on the bus, writing and
thinking of the bands that
really were the soundtrack
to our youth. I grew up on a
lot of Springsteen because of
my dad, and [Katy Perry’s]
“Teenage Dream” is one of
the greatest songs of all time
— a perfectly written pop
song. It’s hard to choose a fa-
vorite Springsteen song. I saw
the River tour twice, and I
love that whole album: “Hun-
gry Heart,” “Point Blank.”
Your parents played a lot
of classic rock. Was there
any band you flat-out hated?
Luckily, I was never exposed
to any crap. My dad loved
Zeppelin and Pink Floyd;
my mom was obsessed with
Fleetwood Mac. I listened to a
ton of Aretha Franklin and
Chaka Khan and Carole King.
There were a lot of influences
before I ever heard country
music.
You posed for a tasteful
topless photo in Playboy
and people freaked out.
What was your reaction?
I mean, I think everyone
needs to calm down. Maybe
people thought that when
the magazine comes out, I’m
gonna be completely nude,
which is hilarious. I’m cool
with my body, but I wouldn’t
do that. I hear, “You’re my
daughter’s role model and
I won’t be bringing her to
your shows anymore.” I’m
like, “How about you be
your daughter’s role model?”
I mean, Dolly Parton was
on the cover of Playboy in
the Seventies. If you think
country’s going to hell, well,
Dolly did it!You were a young country
fan when the whole Dixie
Chicks backlash happened.
How did it affect you?
I remember not fully grasping
what it meant. But even
at 13 or 14, I knew it was
really gross that people were
running over their CDs and
making bonfires of them. It
just didn’t feel right. It was
completely unfair treatment
of a group of women just
voicing an opinion, like any
dude has in the history of
time. They just happened tobe in a genre where it’s not
cool to ever air that opinion.
Sheryl Crow was one of
your heroes growing up.
What’s it been like to record
and perform with her?
She’s such a lovely, calm
presence and has so much
wisdom. There wouldn’t
be the Highwomen without
Sheryl Crow. Her music was
so impactful in the Nineties,
when there weren’t a ton
of female voices that were
writers and musicians and
were saying something thatmattered. And the beauty for
me was that she didn’t have
to choose between artistic
integrity and being commer-
cially viable and catchy.
How hard was it to make
all the different genres
work together on your new
album?
“The Middle” made me less
afraid to hit every nail on the
head. But I didn’t know until
we got to the mixing phase if
the album was going to feel
cohesive, because it was so
many genres in the melting
pot. We did that on my first
record, but this one felt like
more of a pressure cooker —
I have fans this time around!
So I, initially, was a little
afraid that all of these colors
and sounds weren’t going
to fit, but the amazing players
helped it all make sense. And
I think that especially in the
streaming era, I don’t want
to hear the same thing over
and over again. I want to see
the bounds and leaps that an
artist can convey in a single
record.
When you moved to
Nashville, you thought you
were just going to be a
songwriter, not a per former.
Where was your head at
that point?
My only experience of touring
was in Texas at bars, where
I was background music for
people getting hammered.
That was the only context
I had for being an artist
onstage. So when I moved
to Nashville, I was like, “The
Texas circuit was enough for
me, so I’m going to be behind
the scenes and hopefully
write great songs for major
artists.” And it wasn’t until a
few years and clocking a few
hundred songs that I realized
I did miss being the voice.
And writing your future
hit “My Church” made you
realize you had to become
a singer again, right?
My publisher brought me
to L.A. to team with writers
there. Ironically enough, I
wrote “My Church,” which
is a very country song, out
there. And I had a panic
attack at the thought of
someone else recording it. I
felt like I would break out in
hives if someone else sang
those words. That had never
happened to me before.