Maren Morris, a Pop-Curious Hitmaker, Is Country, After All
The New York Times
With proven Top 40 chops, the singer has still chosen to call Nashville home on her third album, “Humble Quest,” due out in March.
NASHVILLE — It was always supposed to be when, not if, for Maren Morris’s permanent pop crossover.
A Nashville songwriter from Texas-turned-irrepressible country headliner, Morris was, from the jump, as fluent in the Spice Girls and Beyoncé as she was in the Dixie Chicks and Patty Griffin. She was also a tattooed, spray-tanned, nose-ringed liberal firecracker who posed for Playboy — arguing, hey, Dolly did it — in a stubbornly old-fashioned town especially discriminating about its female stars.
When Morris did dip a stiletto into the Top 40 metaverse not long after her breakout debut album, lending her missile of a voice to “The Middle” by the EDM maestro Zedd in 2018, the result was beyond affirmation: The track became a ubiquitous, multiplatinum smash, with Morris’s emphatic “bay-bay!” alone proving her mettle in the pop firmament.
