Maren Morris Clarifies Her Surprising Exit From Country Music

Maren Morris isn't closing the door on country music for good. The "My Church" singer clarified her comments about taking a "step back" from the country genre during her Tuesday night appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon two months after saying it had been "burning itself down" with racism, misogyny, and discriminatory attitudes.

"I don't think [country music is] something you can really leave because it's a music that's in me and that's what I grew up doing," she told host Jimmy Fallon after he asked if she was completely done with the genre. Morris continued that country music was what she tends to write, even if she's been "sort of genre-fluid" throughout her career. "You can't, like, scrub the country music out," she told Fallon, noting that her comments about leaving country behind were "hyperbolic."

"But, you know, headlines are different from the things you actually say," she added, as Fallon replied, "So you're not leaving country music?" Morris answered, "No, no. I'm taking, like, the good parts with me and all are welcome. ...But, yeah, there were just some facets of it that I didn't really, like, jibe with anymore. So, I'm a lot happier now."

Morris didn't mince words when speaking with the Los Angeles Times in September. "The further you get into the country music business, that's when you start to see the cracks. And once you see it, you can't un-see it. So you start doing everything you can with the little power you have to make things better," she said. The "Girl" singer continued that she began noticing a shift "after the Trump years," when people's "biases were on full display" and she found that many were "proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic."

"All these things were being celebrated, and it was weirdly dovetailing with this hyper-masculine branch of country music," she said. "I call it butt rock." Morris called songs like Jason Aldean's controversial "Try That in a Small Town" a "last bastion," telling the outlet, "People are streaming these songs out of spite. It's not out of true joy or love of the music. It's to own the libs. ...And that's so not what music is intended for. Music is supposed to be the voice of the oppressed – the actual oppressed. And now it's being used as this really toxic weapon in culture wars."