MAREN MORRIS: Sophomore Album, GIRL, Available Now! Cut x Cut audio and video links to support release.
Maren Morris’ album GIRL: Cut X Cut Audio
I wrote ‘Girl” with Sarah Aarons and Greg Kirsten and we wrote it last Spring. It was the last song I wrote for the album that ended up making it on there. I wrote it from a place of being really self-critical and how there are so many outside factors that can affect you negatively, everything from a co-worker or a bully at school or your inner critic or your peers. There is so much stuff in the world that you need to quiet down and this song was a really therapeutic way of saying ‘it is okay right now to not feel okay.’ That’s perfectly healthy to say that and there is so much healing that comes when we talk about our mental health and I love that more people are braver at talking about that. This song just captured my journey of finding my own voice and silencing that inner-critic.
The Feels I wrote with my friends Laura Veltz and Jimmy Robins. It was a silly title I brought in about thinking someone is attractive and wanting to say ‘let’s just stay in tonight and get a cheap bottle of champagne and have a party you and I.’ It is a really fun, light song and I love the lightness it brings to the records. It is one of the songs we actually tested out on the road last year and it was a really fun one for fans so I am excited there is a recorded version of it now.
I wrote “All My Favorite People” with my husband, Ryan Hurd, and our friend Mikey Reaves and it just had this really inclusive, party vibe. I love those real honky-tonk fun songs because I grew up playing in bars and weird honky-tonks around Texas so this song is kind of me getting back to my roots. Obviously, if I am going to have a song called all my favorite people I have to invite some of my favorite people to be a part of it. John and T.J., the Brothers Osborne, they agreed to be a part of the song and came in the studio. John completely killed the guitar solo that you hear at the end of the song, he did it in like one take. T.J.’s voice is so unique, you immediately know it is T.J. Osborne when he is singing now, and he just brought such swagger to that verse. I love those guys they are some of my best friends in town so to have a song on my second record with them is really special.
I wrote “A Song for Everything” with Jimmy Robbins and Laura Veltz. They came out on the road with me when I was opening for Sam Hunt so this was the Summer before last, it was quite a while ago now, but they came out on the road to write and we were talking about our favorite bands in High School and started name dropping all these bands and artists that really influenced us as teenagers. For me that was “Teenage Dream” by Katie Perry, which is one of my favorite pop songs of all time, and Coldplay and just to put them in the song felt like this is my story, these are the people that really influenced me as a kid. It’s just a song about the soundtrack to your life and what songs bring you back.
I wrote “Common” with Greg Kurstin and Sarah Aarons and t is really just a spiritual song about wanting the world to become glued back together. Sometimes that just feels like it will never happen but you can still have hope that it could and that starts with a conversation. This song is really about bringing people together and talking about the hard issues and the dinner table conversations that should be had. The fact that Brandi Carlile is a part of it, with such a soulful voice that she has always had, she brought that song to an even more soulful level. I have become friends with her in this process which has been really beautiful. I now can’t even imagine that song not having her vocals on it.
I wrote “Flavor” with Laura Veltz and Jimmy Robbins. This was another bus trip where they came out with me when I was on the Sam Hunt tour and Laura had the title “Flavor” and I was like ‘yea I do not know what that means but sounds cool.’ We were in the back lounge of my bus and started talking about how we all have our own identity and that doesn’t always go down smooth with everyone but you know you are being your authentic self. You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea or everyone’s flavor but you can guarantee they are going to remember it. I loved all the references we make to taste and really being your own person. That was a fun, really sassy write and I am glad this song made the record because it is a really fun song to perform live. I think it is just about letting your freak flag fly.
“Make out With Me” is pretty self-explanatory. I think this song came from the perspective of me leaving a drunk voicemail to my husband and, he was my boyfriend at the time, I wanted to write a song that was a little bit shorter than an average song because it’s just a rambling drunk voicemail in song form. It’s about the distance between us and how we travel all the time and once your person’s planes lands it’s like ‘come straight home I am ordering food we are going to make a night of this’ and I just love how fun this song is.
I wrote “Gold Love” with Busbee who co-produced this record with me and that was actually one of the earlier songs that was in the batch of this album being made. It had a really gospely soulful undertone, I love the big choruses at the very end where I got to stack all the gospel vocals. It really was a beautiful song that came together in the end and has become one of my favorites even though it is one of the older songs.
I wrote “The Great Ones” with my husband Ryan Hurd and Mickey Reaves and we actually wrote this song a couple days after Ryan and I got engaged. I just remembered thinking ‘what else would we write about right now’ and we just started thinking about those really eternal loves. I always think about Jonny Cash and June Carter and that kind of historical, iconic love that we all want so the hook was “most loves don’t make it through but the great ones do.” That simplicity of such a grand idea really spoke to us and we finished the song and it ended up being the soundtrack to our engagement week.
“RSVP,” oh my goodness this one packs a punch because it started being written without me in the room. It was a song that Natalie Hemby sent me that they had started with just the chorus kind of flushed out and I was on the road at the time and she sent me a work tape of “RSVP” and I was like ‘I love this chorus I would love to come finish this with you guys when I get back in town.’ I came back and we finished the verses and added that French speak in the bridge “respondez s’il vous plaît.” It is a really sexy song about owning your sexuality and not being embarrassed by it or bashful. I feel like so many women are just taught to feel like they have to cover themselves or cover their sexuality with clothing or humor they have to be polite. This is about not being a polite person it is about “being the owner of your domain” to quote Seinfeld. This is one of the fun ones live.
I wrote “To Hell and Back” with Jessie Jo Dillon and Laura Veltz who wrote “Rich” with me so they are kind of my go to girls on really important songs. I feel like this song came out of a time when I was ending a relationship and I was in a really dark place. I started growing deeper feelings for this new guy and he was so accepting and non-judgmental of my process of healing from that other relationship and kind of gave me space and understood my mess. I thought that was such a pure type of love to receive from someone, it was like “I know you aren’t ready for us yet, I know you aren’t ready for me yet, but I am going to wait till you get out of hell.”
I wrote “The Bones” with Jimmy Robbins and Laura Veltz. It was a day I was writing in Nashville and Laura brought the title “The Bones.” She is always so good at bringing stuff like that to the table and it is always a weird title and that is why her and I get along so well because I am willing to get weird, but she always makes it so sentimental and real life and we just started talking about how gracious we were with our relationships at the time. I was feeling so solidified with my then fiancé and now husband, she was feeling so amazing with her marriage and her children, and Jimmy just found out that his wife was pregnant and we were all just super solid with our partners. Writing this song about the bones of the house even if a hurricane or storm or the wolves come the structure of the house is still standing, the foundation is still there. You could rip it down to the studs and the foundation of this relationship isn’t going anywhere.
“Good Woman” was a write that was kind of unexpected, I was writing with Ian Fitchuk and then Kathleen Edwards who is a Canadian artist I have loved since High School but she kind of stopped doing music and opened a coffee shop in Toronto. I remember always listening to her album “Voyager” to get through my breakup and I just ended up reaching out to her being like “hey I know you don’t do music anymore but I am a huge fan if you are ever in Nashville please reach out I would love to write.” She came down and got out of Canada for a second and we wrote a couple songs that week. She and this beautiful melody that turned into the melody that “Good Woman” has and it was just a pure love song and probably the most vulnerable I have ever been willing to go in a song about someone I am with. I remember being very bashful playing it for Ryan because it was so clearly about him and I do not think I have ever been that soft in a song before. I almost could not even look at him when I played it for him and I remember how emotional he got when I played it. I feel like it belongs on this record because it is a side of me that I do no not let most people see, including myself.
“Shade” I brought to my co-writers, Natalie Hemby and Tyler Johnson, and I had the title written down originally as like a concept was going to be about throwing shade and it was going to be way more of like a sassy, downer song. Natalie had the brilliant idea, she just blurted out “your my perfect shade” that’s how she heart it when I said the title and I was like ‘oh that is way better let’s take it there.’ It ended up being the most musical moments of the whole album which is why I wanted it to be the last song on the record because personally on my favorite albums, the last song is always my favorite. I think it is because I know in my head that’s what the artist wants to put a period on the end of the sentence with. This song just goes to places musically that are stratospheric. It feels like Beatles, Elton John musically and that’s like a tribute to the band and the players on this record. They just totally took it there and it is just such a powerful way to end this second album. It makes me think once that song ends I hope the listener immediately starts the album over again.