Maren Morris gets candid on her past year: ‘It hasn’t been easy’
Maren Morris chats with USA TODAY’s Ralphie Aversa about her Golden Globe nomination and the past year of her life and career.
Maren Morris is a few days past her divergent Coachella performances – a lovely “My Church” with the LA Philharmonic and a lively “The Middle” with electro-pop DJ Zedd – and she’s still buzzing from the desert music festival.
“Singing ‘My Church’ with the orchestra, that was my first single and country hit but you saw 10 years later the resonance it still had with the crowd,” Morris says from Nashville. “I always get emotional during that song, but with the choir and the setting at golden hour when we performed … and then cut to the next night with Zedd. A complete 180. We’ve had such a great friendship so I didn’t feel as nervous. And the artists he brought up – John Mayer and Julia Michaels – are all my friends, so it was a celebratory night.”
Morris has plenty to revel in this year.
Her just-released fourth studio album, “Dreamsicle,” a lush pop-leaning extension of last summer’s “Intermission” EP, is stocked with equal parts sass and introspection.
The songs “Bed No Breakfast” and “Push Me Over” detail modern dating from the bisexual Morris with a mixture of cheeky humor and pure exploratory lust, while the album’s glossy title track digs into her continued acceptance that sometimes even things that feel permanent melt away (“Will I ever enjoy anything while I’m standing in it?” she muses in the song).
When it’s mentioned that much of the lyrical content on the album has a “something has changed within me” vibe connected to the “Wicked” song “Defying Gravity,” Morris immediately agrees.
“I’m a massive ‘Wicked’ fan and I heavily identify with Elphaba. Her core beliefs have been so rocked that she feels so betrayed, but she also has this intrepid calmness because she knows she can’t change the entire system,” Morris, 35, says. “Everyone comes to the point with their hometown or a relationship and been like, I have reached the finish line of whatever this was and I cannot stick around … and that is scary.”
Morris, who divorced country singer/songwriter Ryan Hurd in 2024 (they share a 5-year-old son, Hayes) said she reached out to friends including Taylor Swift and The Chicks during her times of personal upheaval and gleaned “peace and advice” from them.
But her experiences are her own, and Morris views “Dreamsicle” as a “demarcation line” in her life.
“It’s honoring her,” she says of her younger self, “and not this ‘youth is wasted on the young’ bitterness, but more ‘thank God she got me here.’ These are several chapters of my life going into one full (album) and I’m honoring each of them. I’m so happy I gave myself the time to do so. This is a healing space.”
Along with her new album, Morris will embark on a global trek to support “Dreamsicle,” with the North American leg starting July 12 in Quebec City and running through Sept. 12 in Atlanta. Tickets are on sale at 10 a.m. local time May 2 via marenmorris.com.
She’s been crafting the tour and production for about a year and is excited that plans “are 3D now and not just an email PDF.”
The mix of festivals, amphitheaters and clubs is something she’s become used to since the pandemic caused the cancelation of her 2020 RSVP Tour.
“Since COVID we’ve been flexible and adaptable to the touring scale, which we learned to do out of necessity. It’s worked in our favor because playing some intimate venues, we can get our bearings from day one,” she says. “I just want (the shows) to feel like a vulnerable, fun experience and escape. I’m really setting an artistically high bar for myself and I want it to feel human to the fan buying the ticket.”
While the color palette of “Dreamsicle” indicates a ‘60s-era “Beach Blanket Bingo” motif, Morris is leaning more toward the trees and ambient lighting of her last tour rather than the “crazy LED walls and low fog and hydraulic lifts” from her run to support “Girl” in 2019.
“I love a lamp and a rug and some instruments. Those have always been touchstones to me, like, can these people actually play and sing? I do love an over-the-top show, but for what I do, I think there is a way to blend both worlds and bring it back to an organic space of real humans making music,” she says.
As with her 2022 Humble Quest Tour, Morris will be joined by her closest fan, son Hayes, who is already a road warrior who travels well, loves to visit catering and hang out with mom’s band.
Morris readily admits that touring with a child changes the dynamic – “Your day is a lot longer and a lot different,” she says – but she appreciates the ancillary benefits of having her little guy on the bus.
“The biggest gift with kids is experiencing things through their eyes and he’s getting me out of my comfort zone of the bus and venue and we’re going to the local zoo and park,” she says.
Once she’s on stage, though, Morris will sprinkle many of her new songs throughout a set that might include her reworked slow-burn version of Billy Idol’s 1983 fist pumper, “Dancing with Myself” along with new album tracks that she describes as “living in organic spaces to heavily layered synths and vocal stacks.”
Two standout tracks, the funky “People Still Show Up” co-produced by Jack Antonoff and the pub singalong “Too Good,” are prime contenders and also indicative of Morris’ personal listening habits during her writing and recording period – a lot of Patty Griffin, Foy Vance and a throwback to her high school years, The Cardigans.
“I was in this deep, deep ‘70s mindset,” she says. “There was a lot of vulnerability and chaos in my songwriting, but also a lot of fun and pop … I never feel like I have to change anything.”
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