Music

In the autumn of 2023, Maren Morris watched on as her life, at least as she knew it, went up in smoke. In September, she publicly announced that she would no longer participate in the country music industry, which inspired a series of criticisms from a few of the genre’s most outspoken voices. The following month, she filed for divorce from her husband of five years, Ryan Hurd. 
She puts things more succinctly today: “Everything in my life fell apart last year,” she tells Billboard as a nervous chuckle breaks through the sobering sentence.

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When faced with a series of personal crises, Morris turned to the one place she knew she could find answers — songwriting. Calling on a group of collaborators both new and old, the singer decided her only option at moving forward was to put in the work. “Even the days where I could barely peel myself out of bed, I would still go to my session,” she says. “My co-writers were like, ‘We can cancel,’ And I would say, ‘No, I can’t go home. It’s too depressing.’ I just had to push through.” 

Nearly a year later, Morris is ready to let fans see how far she’s come. Intermission, the 34-year-old singer’s latest EP out now via Columbia Records, is an exercise in limitless self-expression. Each of the project’s five songs seek to answer the question Morris asked herself after the “personal implosion” took over her life: “What do I even say now?”

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As it turns out, Morris still had plenty to say. Album opener “Cut” deconstructs the wall between Morris’ public and private lives, contrasting the put-together “pro” she shows her fans with the despondent girl behind closed doors who lets her “tears fall where they want. The heartwarming “Because, Of Course” offers a vision of unconditional love, in stark opposition to the folk-chant of “I Hope I Never Fall in Love.” The EP sees Morris embracing emotions in all their complication, without exemption. 

“[Songwriting] was an amazing distraction from the dumpster fire that was my life last fall. I know that a lot of these songs pulled me through it, and that this is some of my most honest work,” she says.

In seeking out her most honest point of view, Morris ended up working with a number of new collaborators on the project, including pop auteurs like Joel Little, Delacey, Evan Blair and Michael Pollack. Leaning further away from genre-specific restrictions, Morris explains that writing Intermission meant finding people from outside her stable of past songwriters. 

“I was just kind of allowing myself to fall in love with people’s talent and not be like, ‘Oh my god, have I worked with them before? Do we have any mutual friends? Who would be a big name?” she says. “I was just like, ‘Hey, are they the right person for the job?’” 

That sense of discovery led Morris to enlist prolific indie-pop band MUNA for their assistance on her bouncing single “Push Me Over.” With lyrics written by Morris and all three members of the trio as well as production courtesy of MUNA’s Naomi McPherson, the new single provided an opportunity for Morris to explore uncharted terrain in her musical career — a flirtatious dissection of her sexuality. “Want you in my bed, ‘cause I don’t need more friends/ The more that you come closer, I want you to push me over,” she sings on the song’s brash chorus. “Sitting on the fence feels good between my legs.” 

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As she reminisces on her first songwriting session with MUNA, Morris notes the importance of writing her self-described “bi-panic” into music alongside three pioneers of the modern queer pop space. 

“I remember I had been on a date with this girl, and the date went amazing, but I had so many questions for MUNA the next day. I truly felt like a student and I was with, like, the Professors of Gay,” she laughs. “They were obviously so supportive, and it made this the easiest song to write. It just puts a pep in my step and I feel like I could have only written it with them.”

“Push Me Over” arrives after the singer received a wave of support from fans back in June, when she publicly came out as bisexual via an Instagram post. Yet despite the sheer amount of public support she received, Morris admits that her coming out didn’t really feel like a “proper” coming out. 

“I think it was one of those things where I thought, ‘Does this really require an Instagram post?’ It didn’t feel like, ‘Oh, this is going to be some big f–king bombshell,’” she says. “I just think that for any sort of public-facing artist that just, it does feel inclusive to let people know. Also, I get to feel like I’m really not hiding any part of myself any longer. So that makes me sleep better at night.” 

As fun as “Push Me Over” was to write, Morris notes that not every song on the project came as easily. “This Is How a Woman Leaves,” the heartbreaking final song on the record, offers a stream-of-consciousness confession as Morris details the painstaking process of letting herself grieve her marriage before walking away from it.

Morris remembers blasting the demo to “This is How” from her car speakers “on the way to divorce court.” Now that it’s out, she hopes the song provides some solace to other women struggling to find their way out of a relationship. “I don’t know, I think it’s going to be one of those [songs] that like, really helps people … which is so bizarre to say as the creator of it,” she says. “I was blasting that song just to get through the day, and now it’s going to be in other peoples’ cars and homes. So I hope it helps, really.”

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The singer adds that she’s most excited to hear how fans interact with her new songs live. She says fans have already joined in on the catharsis of screaming “honestly, f–k” with her when performing “Cut.” Now, she’s curious to see which parts of her other tracks the fans get attached to live. “Sometimes I can fast forward my life to the live show and be like, ‘This is the line that will resonate with fans,’” she says. “But then other times, they’ll pick something out of a song that I had no idea would be popular, and that’s the one that pops off. You really never know until you’re there with them.”

Calling in from Idaho, where she finished her latest show on the RSVP Redux tour, Morris reports that the live show is going “really, really well,” and is even bringing in a much younger crowd than she expected. “I don’t know if it’s the music itself, or just the way that people are finding my music on TikTok, but I’ve just noticed a lot of young people in the crowd,” she says.

Perhaps the younger audience is coming because of Morris’ highly-democratic process of choosing her setlist — on this tour in particular, Morris and her band craft a different setlist every night based on fan requests sent in via Morris’ website. That meant learning “upwards of 45 songs” in rehearsals for the tour, and allowing themselves to be flexible in the moment for their concerts. But Morris says it’s been a win-win situation for everyone involved — fans feel invested in the show, and the singer gets a chance to revisit songs that she otherwise wouldn’t have thought to perform live.

“Last night, for instance, we played ‘Make Out With Me’ — which is just an interlude from Girl — because it was a request,” she says. “As we were singing it, I realized that I’d forgotten how slutty this song is! I got totally transported back to the, the person I was when I wrote this. So, it’s nice when people remember the songs that weren’t singles or huge smashes — it was just a deep cut that they truly remembered and loved.”

With the evolution of her sound, her live show, and even herself, Morris fittingly calls Intermission an “act break” in her life; a marker of what came before and what yet remains to be seen. And for her future, Morris has big goals — after spending all of her time lately writing about herself, Morris says she wants to write as anyone else.

“I started writing for a Broadway musical last year, and it was nice having a prompt to write for. Not everything has to be through my personal experience, so it felt like I almost got to be an actor,” she said of the process. “Like, ‘Okay, let me put themselves in their shoes, and like myself in their shoes, and then write what I think they would say.’ I really hope I get to do more of it.”

But as we chat, Morris explains that she’s mostly ready to be done waiting for Intermission to come out. After much speculation, fans will finally get to hear how she really feels about everything that’s been happening around her. “Typically, I’d be terrified to put out music this baldly truthful,” she says. “But because I’m not like protecting anyone else’s agenda or feelings anymore, I can just release my point of view. And that feels pretty refreshing.”