When Maren Morris headlined OutLoud Music Festival during West Hollywood Pride in May, she reveled in the “very ceremonial” moment. It had been a year since she came out publicly as bisexual, and taking the stage — this time as someone embraced from within the LGBTQ+ community — brought a new emotional weight.
“Doing it in West Hollywood was perfect,” she says. “It felt very official, but really just so beautiful.”
That performance was one of many markers in what has been a deeply personal and creative shift for Morris over the past few years. She’s released the cathartic and emotionally rich album “Dreamsicle”; she’s opened up about her queerness, motherhood and healing; and she’s fielded an endless stream of questions from journalists about whether or not she’s “left” country music.
Her publicist even gently suggested we avoid the topic altogether — and honestly, it’s easy to understand why. The conversation around Morris’s place in the genre has often missed the point. “Leaving country music” and doing country music your own way are not the same thing. Morris hasn’t turned her back on anything — she’s simply refusing to shrink inside a system that doesn’t always make space for the full complexity of who she is and what she has to say. Her current tour, which stops in Pennsylvania in September and Ohio in October, showcases the full range of the sound she’s developed throughout her career.
In our conversation, Morris reflects on the support she’s received from the queer community, her ever-evolving identity, and how “Dreamsicle” became a kind of coming-out record — one that captures her voice at its most unfiltered. She also revisits her headline-making moment at the 2023 Love Rising benefit in Nashville, where she said, “I introduced my son to some drag queens today, so Tennessee, fucking arrest me,” in protest of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation. Two years later, that spark remains — but it’s been sharpened by lived experience and a clearer sense of who she’s always been.
At WeHo Pride this summer, what did it feel like to receive that kind of love and support from a community you’re now officially a part of?
It was just such a beautiful night. Since a year ago, the support has meant so much to me, and I was at the GLAAD Awards in L.A. a couple months back. But yeah, it just feels like I’ve always felt the love and acceptance and support from that community, but then once you sort of enter it and aren’t just an ally, it does feel like a shift. It just makes it easier, I guess, knowing that there’s open arms awaiting. So yeah, that meant a lot to me.
Was the experience of coming out what you expected it to be? So many of us wonder what it will actually feel like when the moment comes — especially in an industry like country music, where there’s the fear of potential backlash. Did it unfold the way you had imagined, or did it take a different shape?
I was pleasantly surprised by the positivity that came from it. There’s always a risk of backlash or negativity, but I was really bowled over by the response being so light. So yeah, that was a relief. But no, I think, it is hard to visualize what it would look like once you do come out, but it kind of exceeded any expectation I had because I think there was just already such a groundwork, especially in my crowd at shows — of acceptance and love and non-judgment. So having that backdrop of a fan base that is just so open-hearted and kind made it easier. It’s probably more difficult for those who don’t have a platform the way that I do or who are growing up in the South and don’t feel like they have a community to welcome them into or it’s harder to find. That has to be just excruciatingly difficult. So I feel like I was a lucky one.
And you are now that representation for young people in smaller communities who might not have someone to look up to. I’m not in your shoes, so I can’t fully understand what that feels like — but as someone who loved country music growing up, I remember how little representation there was for people like me. That must feel pretty meaningful to you, I imagine?
Yeah, I think as a woman, I always had these idols that I looked up to in country music. I think about Dolly Parton. She’s been a gay icon for decades, and [she] just feels so intrinsically gay. So drag. You’re an amplified version of yourself. You’re the most confident version of yourself. Nothing defines that more than the queer community and these flashes of it that I’ve seen in country music. In recent years, there’s been a little more representation. Not enough, but it gives me hope, for sure.
What were some specific cultural moments in country music that allowed you to really come into yourself?
I think about the women that I idolized, especially in the early 2000s and late ’90s. It was just The Chicks. They were just so ballsy. I loved that they were also from Texas and wrote all their songs, played all the instruments. Natalie Maines is just one of the greatest vocalists on earth, still, and they were so brash and unapologetic and funny, and also style icons. Also, Shania was this country superstar, but also this pop star. I loved that she was subverting [expectations of country women performers]. It was also a time during which we were getting out of the era of long hair, hairspray, bangs, prairie skirt and denim vest. We were culturally shifting in fashion too, but seeing just these sexy, funny women breaking boundaries made me feel like, wow, someday I would love to do that in my own way. In country music, those people made me feel like, OK, these are rock stars and I am so inspired and I can’t wait to be just like them.
And now you are among them.
Now I’ve toured with both of them. Full circle!
I’d love to talk about “Dreamsicle.” It feels like such a healing piece of work — not just for you, but for listeners. What was it like putting something out into the world that still felt so fresh and close to what you were experiencing at the time?
It’s crazy. It’s been out for just over a month, but I’ve lived with some of these songs for years; it’s the first album I’ve put out that the most recent song added was six months prior to the record dropping. It was that closely aligned with the headspace I was still in. But I wanted to put this record out as I was still in the heart and headspace of it, and healing from it. Sometimes you write a body of work and then the album comes out a year later, then you tour it six months later, after you’ve processed a lot of that emotion.
With this record, you want to be in the emotion still?
Yeah, I still want to be sitting in it while it’s fresh. A really exciting element of this whole album release is the fact that, with these songs, I’m still inside them.
Fans have been calling this your coming out album. Do you see it that way?
Yeah, in all the ways. I think it was such a leaf turn from my previous album and work and, just personally, everything in my life is different from the first record. I’ve got a 5-year-old son, I’m divorced, I’m in this new chapter of dating, and also creating in step with that and then just working on, still… there’s no linear or end point to healing from past grief, there’s just never a period. So I’m processing, and it has been really wonderful for me.
I’m a more secure person than I was just a few short years ago. I don’t take myself as seriously. But then, also, this is the most producers I’ve had on any given project, just because I wrote it over three years. I was working with Jack Antonoff, Greg Kirsten, Naomi McPherson from Muna, Evan Blair, Joel Little. There’s a lot of people I was having sessions with over the years. But each song that came out of those sessions felt like a really important intentional chapter of the bigger picture. So I didn’t need it to all be under one umbrella. I just needed the songs to feel true.
I love that there’s a massive diversity of creative brains on this, but it’s still very much me at the end of the day. And yeah, I think coming out, literally and figuratively, is the album in a lot of different ways — of stepping forward into the light.
Is there one song that feels especially personal to you coming out?
The one that comes to mind in that way, of just self-acceptance, is “Carry Me Through,” for sure. It’s sort of the story of coming out in any person’s life. You can have friends and family, sometimes you don’t, sometimes people aren’t even your loved ones, aren’t going to be on your side — sadly, it’s the worst thing in the world to hear about. But whether you have that community backdrop or not, no one’s going to come out for you.
When I was playing at WeHo Pride, I was chatting with the crowd before my song, “Because, Of Course.” I wrote that song a couple years back about my son from a motherly standpoint; he’s getting older and I’m still touring, and sometimes he can come out with me and sometimes he has to stay back. But that was my promise of, wherever I am in the world, I’m always going to love you because of course, duh. But then as I was speaking to the crowd at Pride. That song, for some reason that night, was hitting me in a way that felt like the chorus lyrics were just really resonating with me on stage with that crowd: “If you need a place to land, I’ll be the floor. If you need an easy out, I’ll be the door. I’m always going to love you because, of course.” It just really hit me emotionally, and the crowd emotionally and unintentionally, even though I wrote it about my son. Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen fans online just take it and share their stories about their coming out experience.
Back in 2023, you took the stage at the Love Rising benefit concert in Nashville — a night of resistance in response to Tennessee’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including efforts to restrict drag performances. When you said, “Tennessee, fucking arrest me,” after introducing your son to some drag queens, it was a bold, defiant stand in support of drag artists and trans rights during a particularly hostile moment. Two years later, with many of these issues still unfolding — now on a federal level — how do you reflect on that moment?
It meant so much to me that we came together so quickly to put that show in place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. Bridgestone Arena is on Broadway, so there’s tons of foot-traffic tourism, a lot of country music bars, and our state legislator is just acting a fool and trying to rile up division and scare tactics to achieve absolutely nothing. There was no productivity or even a way of enforcing a drag ban, and they knew that they were just trying to fuck around.
I think it was really important to show the state of Tennessee, but also the world, that this is a progressive artistic creative hub that, yes, is a beautiful place to come write songs and make music, but also we pay a lot in taxes. People make music here and live here, and a lot of people have moved here, especially during Covid, and you’re going to enforce these ridiculous, homophobic, bigoted, transphobic bills into the legislature that will never pass. Just proving to the town that this isn’t what we stand for, that was the most beautiful part of the night. I brought my son and all the local queens that were getting ready in the big dressing room; they’ve got their wigs, their costume changes, they’re like mid-beat, and I went and introduced my son to some of them. So I was just enamored. My son always loves watching when I’m in hair and makeup. So I was like, he will love this. This is that on steroids.
There is such a transformation of self there, but also an exercise and discovery of self there. Drag is the most modern-day form of what that is. And it’s beautiful and it’s brave, and I just love a Southern drag queen. After I had introduced my son to them and walked away with him from the dressing room, I was like, wow, it’s crazy that this is what we’re condemning — we’re trying to legislate out of a very genuine, pure interaction of just someone being their truest self. What a waste of time to try to outlaw that.
I’m thinking about your influence on aspiring queer artists. What would you say to someone who’s trying to break into country music?
Tell your story. What I love about country music is you can be so specific. Some of these traditional country songs were so specific about something that you did not go through personally, but the emotion is ringing true. And through that, you’re like, I completely identify with this. So I think expressing whatever makes you feel closer to yourself and your craft. You can’t write for an audience. You can’t write for public consumption because that’s going to be completely out of your control. You have to do this to excite yourself, to feel closer to you, to heal something inside of you. And if that is authentic and true, people are going to hear it and it’s going to resonate with them. And that is a gift. It’s a superpower. I mean, anything in the public eye, there’s going to be downsides. Just criticisms, having to grow a thicker skin; there’s not a pill you can take. It is something that has to thicken over time.
Everything you’ve said feels like what you wished you would’ve told young Maren.
Oh, girl, yes. I should have written it down. It’s true. But I guess I don’t give that to just any new artist or child that wants to get into songwriting or get a record deal. But those are ancillary goals. It all just still has to come from the same hub of, I was put here to say this in a different way than any other human being on this planet. I feel like every time I write with someone new, I just went somewhere else. I got to walk through the cobblestone streets of someone else’s memories.
