The Two Archetypes Maren Morris Never Fit Into
Written by broebling on September 5, 2019
When Maren Morris was on Late Night with Seth Meyers this week, the conversation came naturally and the two of them really covered a lot of territory. These were some of our favorite topics.
On her six CMA Awards nominations:
“I didn’t expect to walk away with all of those. It’s very cool. I feel like the cool kid.”
On the extreme archetypes of country songs for women:
“Years ago, when I was just writing songs for other artists, I noticed that there was sort of two archetypes that women fit into: there was the damsel in distress that needed to be rescued or wanted to be noticed by the guy at the party, and then there was the way opposite extreme female archetype of like, ’I’m gonna burn your house down if you wrong me.’”
On why she didn’t fit into either one:
“I was like, ’I’m not really hearing my perspective.’ So I would write something that was about 20-somethings. Like we’re a mess, and we’re not quite ready to take the dive with marriage and kids quite yet, but not young enough to make the same college rookie mistakes.”
On what she did to fill that void in country music:
“I started writing songs about being drunk with my friends, eventually made a record about it, and luckily it’s been received well.”
(She’s still doing just that, even though her first album is more than three years old.)
On out-streaming other artists before she even had a record label:
“’My Church’ was the first time as a songwriter where I felt really territorial. It would break my heart to hear someone else other than me recording it. So I put ’My Church’ on Spotify, and it just took off. Labels were going, ’Who is this chick that no one’s heard of that’s out-streaming our artists?’”
