Maren Morris knew the question was coming.
“OK, let’s hear it,” the country star said with a grin as she sat in her dressing room before a concert last week at the Santa Barbara Bowl. Morris, 32, had arrived in Southern California on tour behind the wise and tender “Humble Quest,” which just scored a prestigious nomination for album of the year at November’s Country Music Association Awards. Produced by Greg Kurstin (known for his work with Adele and Foo Fighters), Morris’ third LP uses dreamy-rootsy arrangements to frame the singer-songwriter’s thoughts on romance, ambition and — impossible to ignore since she gave birth to a son, Hayes, in early 2020 — the demands and the elations of motherhood.
Yet as eager as she may have been to discuss her album, which is also expected to fare well in nods for next year’s Grammys, Morris understood that a different topic had put her in the news lately: her very public feud with a fellow country A-lister Jason Aldean and his wife, Brittany, over comments the Aldeans have made about young people seeking gender-affirming care.
It all started when Brittany, a conservative social media influencer with 2.3 million followers on Instagram, posted a video of herself applying makeup. “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase,” she wrote in the caption. “I love this girly life.” Jason, who’s racked up 25 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s country airplay chart and has spoken critically about vaccine mandates and President Biden, commented on his wife’s post with the laughing-crying emoji and wrote, “Lmao!! Im glad they didn’t too, cause you and I wouldn’t have worked out.”
After singer and “The Voice” winner Cassadee Pope condemned Brittany’s statement on Twitter, Morris replied to Pope, referring to Brittany as “Insurrection Barbie” and writing, “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human?” Soon, Brittany took her story — “I think that children should not be allowed to make these life-changing decisions at such a young age,” she said — to Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show, where the right-wing host invoked the threat of unchecked castration and called Morris a “lunatic” and a “country music person who I hope leaves country music immediately.”
“I’ll wear that as a badge of honor,” Morris said in Santa Barbara — and indeed she quickly began selling T-shirts that read “Lunatic Country Music Person,” proceeds from which she said have raised more than $150,000 for Trans Lifeline and GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program. (Brittany made Barbie-inspired T-shirts of her own that read “Don’t Tread On Our Kids.”)
Ahead of an Oct. 13 show at the Hollywood Bowl, Morris, who’s married to country singer Ryan Hurd, spoke in depth about the war of words, which has come amid a broader reckoning over Nashville’s treatment of women, queer people and people of color. These are excerpts from our conversation.
Did you run your initial tweet by anyone before you posted it?
No, I just shot it off. I hate feeling like I need to be the hall monitor of treating people like human beings in country music. It’s exhausting. But there’s a very insidious culture of people feeling very comfortable being transphobic and homophobic and racist, and that they can wrap it in a joke and no one will ever call them out for it. It just becomes normal for people to behave like that.
Is that a new development, in your view?
It’s always sort of been there, if you talk about the Chicks and that kind of being the first canceling. But I feel like it got worse during Trump — which are all the years that I’ve been on a major label and active, since 2016. That’s when everything got worse — irreparable, almost.
Politics aside, ‘Insurrection Barbie’ is a hell of a phrase.
Well, it’s kind of true, because the whole conspiracy theory…
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