What does it mean to quit a music genre? That’s what many of Maren Morris’ fans are asking themselves in the wake of the singer’s announcement in a recent Los Angeles Times interview that she is “getting the hell out” and “leaving” country music. Her explanation, essentially, is that she is fed up with the country industry’s institutional racism, gender discrimination and tolerance for anti-LGBTQ+ voices, along with the blowback she has received for speaking out against these problems. It’s an eye-catching renouncement given Morris’ status, but there’s also a subtlety that may be getting lost. At the heart of this news lay much thornier questions about what country music as a genre even represents in the modern era. Can you quit it like a bad habit or, as Morris sings, more like a bad relationship?
Genres are created by the ever-evolving, nuanced interplay of how fans think about their music and themselves.
In the practical world, a music genre is a complex category defined not by any one set of gatekeepers in the music industry nor by any particular list of awards shows and marketing venues. Rather, genres are created by the ever-evolving, nuanced interplay of how fans think about their music and themselves, how musicians enmesh particular sounds and styles into their sound, and how the industry attempts to differentiate what is, in reality, a messy, interconnected sonic world.
In other words, if fans hear the songwriting roots echoing decades of country artists in Morris’ new EP, along with the poignant twang in her vocals, they are going to hear a country song — regardless of whether Morris shows up at the Country Music Awards or whether any particular DJs pitch the song on country radio. And that’s a good thing, both for Morris and for the whole genre of country music: Headlines blare that she is quitting, but she is also simultaneously doing the vital work of expanding country merely by making the music she makes and calling out the decadeslong exclusionary practices of an industry she no longer wants to buy into. After all, her name is in the headlines and her music and message in water-cooler conversations, while Billboard’s “Hot Country Songs” chart this week has only one track by a solo female artist in the top 20, and a mere three that include a female vocalist as “featured.”
Morris herself understands that country music is not just one thing, nor are its traditions and fans a single homogenous body. In that same LA Times interview, she talked about walking away from “the parts of this that no longer make me happy.” Last year, both she and Brandi Carlile talked about “two country musics” — something that many fans surely understand. Being a country fan doesn’t mean liking every artist that the industry markets, or even ever agreeing with the industry’s choices of who to market.
The limitations of genre also come into focus in these conversations. Morris is not the first country singer to declare a public break from country music: Taylor Swift did it, as did the Chicks. Even before country’s “cancel culture” forced their hand, the Chicks had already challenged the hegemony of the country music industry in court, ultimately getting their own label imprint and more artistic control back in 2002. Diving back a bit further into history, Dolly Parton’s decision to switch managers in the 1970s was also a purposeful pivot toward a bigger, broader audience beyond country. Come to think of it, Willie Nelson left Nashville — both physically and metaphorically — in the early 1970s, heading to Morris’ native Texas, specifically, he declared, to reclaim musical freedom to create outside the limiting constraints of the Nashville music industry.
Longtime country fans might savor another parallel: Nelson’s iconic album “Red Headed Stranger” (1975) was released on the Columbia Records label, but explicitly not through the Nashville branch of Columbia that housed the country division at the time. Morris’ first three major-label studio albums were all released on Columbia Nashville; as the press has noted, her new EP and widely anticipated next album are on Columbia (not Nashville).
Nelson’s lyrics have, on occasion, skewered the country music industry for its allegiance to corporate profits over all else, as have George Strait’s and Alan Jackson’s. Morris’ take is a bit different, focusing on the industry’s harsh tradition of shutting out diversity. But in publicly taking a stance, she is actually part of that same tradition of country artists speaking up and speaking out. Thus, history suggests that calling out the country music industry is, in fact, a very country music sort of thing.
Maybe we can take a second interpretation of Morris’ new track “Get the Hell Out of Here.” She says she’s leaving. But I can also hear that title line as an imperative for country music to get the “hell out” — to clean house and make room for something better. She can market her next album through whatever genre labels she wants; her country fans will still listen.
