Maren Morris Isn’t Leaving Country Music After All

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Roughly two months after announcing her exit from country music, Maren Morris is clarifying her statement, saying that she isn’t leaving the genre after all.

In an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 7, Morris clarified statements she had made to the LA Times in September. When Jimmy Fallon asked the “Girl” singer about the headline that she was leaving country music, she denied that she was leaving the genre completely.

“I don’t think it’s something you can really leave because it’s a music that’s in me. That’s what I grew up doing,” Morris said. “That’s the music I write, even if I’ve been kind of genre-fluid my whole career, you can’t scrub the country music out. So, it was very hyperbolic.”

Fallon then asked Maren directly if she was leaving country music.“No, no, no. I’m taking the good parts with me and all are welcome. But, yeah, there were just some facets of it that I didn’t really jibe with anymore. So, I’m a lot happier now.”

In September, Maren Morris told the LA Times that she has felt “very distanced” from the country music industry and what she thinks the genre represents.

“I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over,” Morris said of country music. “But it’s burning itself down without my help.”

Morris said that her political beliefs made her unpopular in the country music community.

“I’ve always been an asker of questions and a status quo challenger just by being a woman. So it wasn’t really even a choice,” Morris said. “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.”

She added that she chose to distance herself from “a lot of the drama within the community,” and focus on her music instead. “I’m trying to mature here and realize I can just walk away from the parts of this that no longer make me happy.”

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In the same interview with the LA Times, Maren dismissed the success of songs like Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” saying that she thinks the reaction to the song was out of spite, not love of the music.

“It’s not out of true joy or love of the music. It’s to own the libs,” she said.

Morris insisted in the interview that she isn’t out to prove anything. She is simply making a personal choice to separate herself from the things that don’t make her happy.

“I’ve kind of said everything I can say. I always thought I’d have to do middle fingers in the air jumping out of an airplane, but I’m trying to mature here and realize I can just walk away from the parts of this that no longer make me happy,” she told the Times.

Watch Maren Morris‘s full interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in the video below.