04/11/2023
Out Magazine reports that singer Maren Morris has been explaining to the gay press why she's leaving the country music genre. This builds on an earlier interview given to the Los Angeles Daily Times, where she said that she wanted to “take a step back” from the genre due to increased misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia in the industry. Now, she’s clarified those comments. “I love living in Nashville, I have my family,” Morris said in a podcast published by the New York Times. “There's a reason why people come there from L.A. and New York to write with us. It’s because we have amazing songwriters there. That’s not gonna change.... It’s so ingrained and Pavlovian that you are not allowed to criticize this family ever,” she said about responses to her criticizing the more toxic parts of country music. “‘Not only are you criticizing our way of life,’ which I’m not, ‘you’re criticizing every fundamental belief we have, you’re criticizing Jesus, you’re criticizing blue-collar workers, you're criticizing farmers.’ Like, they will go to these lengths to justify the abuse and discrepancies that exist within the machine of what this is.”
