Maren Morris At Her Most Creative & Cathartic: 'I Just Want To Be More Honest With Myself Each Time I Make An Album'

Maren Morris has come a long way since releasing her breakthrough single, My Church, in 2016, and it’s been a long time since she’s been to Australia for a tour. That’s about to change.

Music has always been her lifelong dream. As an eleven-year-old, a confident Maren Morris made her way touring throughout her home state of Texas. That early devotion to her craft led to her attending a Grammy camp—where high school students across the US are selected to participate in a program sponsored by the Grammy Foundation—and later auditioning for the reality television series American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The Voice, and Nashville Star.

In her early career, she released three albums via independent labels: Walk On in 2005, All That It Takes in 2007, and Live Wire in 2011. Morris was later scouted for her songwriting abilities. After linking up with Carla Wallace of Big Yellow Dog Music, Morris signed a four-year songwriting contract and began writing tracks for other artists, including Kelly Clarkson and Tim McGraw.

Encouraged to record her more personal music, Morris wrote My Church in March 2015. Upon hearing the demo, record producer Busbee remarked that he was “super freaked out — in a good way.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Morris found her breakthrough with her major label debut album, Hero, released via Columbia Nashville in June 2016. Even before its release, the American singer-songwriter was in the midst of viral fame on streaming services and publications. She followed up the album with 2019’s Girl and 2022’s Humble Quest, before returning this year with D R E A M S I C L E.

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Morris is bringing her D R E A M S I C L E tour to Australia in January and February 2026, making her long-awaited return Down Under. She made her Australian debut in June 2018, opening for former One Direction member and solo star Niall Horan. She was set to return in 2019, but the tour was unexpectedly cancelled. The D R E A M S I C L E tour marks her first headline dates in Australia and signals a long-overdue reunion with her Aussie fanbase.

Morris catches up with The Music just after announcing the tour. “I’m just so happy we can finally talk about it!” she gushes. “It’s been in the works for a few months, and, yeah, I love Australia.”

The singer-songwriter was on vacation in Australia a few months ago, so she’s looking forward to returning and, this time, touring. She has a strong relationship with her fans Down Under and has made “amazing” friends who live here, not to mention how much she enjoys the food and coffee.

“Everyone that I’ve met who is Australian is just very down to earth, very chill,” Morris says. “I mean, touring there with Niall back in 2018, it was my first time ever being over there, touring or otherwise. So, my band and I just had fun exploring. When I was just there a few months ago, I met so many amazing friends – they’re very excited that I’m coming back to do a proper tour.”

She adds, “I had some of the best food of my life in Sydney, and that was pretty recent. I’m excited to go back to Melbourne on this run, because I remember eating the best brunch of my life there. I feel like Melbourne does brunch and coffee really well. I’m excited to obviously do the shows, but also to just get out and about, walk everywhere, sightsee, maybe do some thrifting [laughs]. But yeah, I’ve had some really lovely memories there.”

Morris is one of those artists who truly loves touring. “I love working on each song in rehearsals, maybe creating a little bit of delineation from the album version of the song, and having a special version for tour so fans feel like they're getting something new,” she says.

But there is a slight challenge in bringing D R E A M S I C L E to life in that it’s a very diverse-sounding record. She adds, “Every night is really important to me. But ultimately, it’s like, once the show kicks in and the fans are singing these words back months later, after it came out, it’s a feeling that I chase always, and I feel so weird when I’m not on the road. So, I’m excited—this will be a fun album to bring to life.”

Her music director, David Cook, is a collaborator Morris describes as “amazing.” Her band? Exceedingly talented and adaptable, which is exactly what she requires as an artist who’s always released music that’s gone “all over the place.”

“My band is not shocked when I throw something at them,” Morris chuckles. “That’s a deep challenge. Of course, we’re going to play songs from my previous work that are the favourites, especially, you know, not having toured in Australia in so long. There’s been so much music that I’ve made that we have not been able to do there. So, we’ll cover a lot of years, and we’ll definitely play the favourites.”

Addressing the 2026 dates, Morris adds, “I’m just kind of glad that we get to do Australia towards the end, because I was like, ‘I can work out all the kinks in the States and then, we’ll be in polish-go mode by the time the Australian and New Zealand fans hear this this show.’”

With her unique brand of pop-infused country music, Morris refuses to be placed in a box, securing collaborations with artists of any genre, from producer Zedd to pop songwriter Julia Michaels to forming a country supergroup, The Highwomen, with Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby.

In late 2023, Morris announced that she had departed the country music industry. She told the Los Angeles Times that the sociopolitical divide among country music artists and their fans had become a miserable hurdle that began “after the Trump years.”

According to Morris, the years leading up to and during Donald Trump’s presidency “revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic. All these things were being celebrated, and it was weirdly dovetailing with this hyper-masculine branch of country music. I call it butt rock.”

She added, “I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over. But it’s burning itself down without my help.” After standing up for trans rights, Morris was labelled a “Lunatic Country Music Person” by Tucker Carlson on Fox News.

Taking the statement as a glowing endorsement, Morris went on to release merchandise with the phrase. Upwards of $100,000 in proceeds for the t-shirt went to GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program and Trans Lifeline.

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While Morris doesn’t classify herself as a political songwriter but rather one who observes the goings-on around her, her position as an advocate for LGBTQIA+ people and artists of colour has made her one. And now, she has her very own bi anthem.

In June 2024, Morris celebrated Pride Month by coming out as bisexual. “happy to be the B in LGBTQ+,” she wrote in a social media post. “happy pride.” Morris made headlines two months later after sharing an Instagram Story where she wore a t-shirt that said, “Queer since birth.”

Morris has always been an outspoken ally for the queer community, receiving GLAAD’s Excellence in Media Award in 2023 for promoting acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. “I’m not brave... making the right decision shouldn’t take bravery or courage. It shouldn’t take heroic effort to want basic human rights for everybody,” she said in her acceptance speech.

“Leaving your house knowing that you can face violence, just for being who you are... that is bravery. This community stood up for me and made me feel safe when I felt alone, and I’ll never be able to repay them, but I hope I get to spend the rest of my life and career settling up.”

Discussing the responsibility to portray bisexual representation in a positive light, Morris tells The Music, “I feel new at this, but having a song like push me over in a moment of, like, deep soul-searching and curiosity is such an amazing look at humanity. Even in your mid-thirties, you’re still figuring out pieces of yourself that you want to understand more and have the courage to do so. So, I think, yeah, showing it in a light of positivity was important to me.”

On her last EP, The Bridge, Morris teamed up with big-time producers Greg Kurstin (Adele, Kylie Minogue, Miley Cyrus) and Jack Antonoff (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana Del Rey). The producers returned on D R E A M S I C L E, which follows her The Bridge and Intermission EPs.

Julia Michaels appears on the Intermission EP for a handful of songs that mined themes of heartbreak and empowerment. It was the perfect launching pad for D R E A M S I C L E, which contains all of Intermission’s tracks and continues Morris’s journey in experimenting with her music.

D R E A M S I C L E is packed with Morris’s fascinating take on modern pop instrumentation, melodies, and production. Take the funk-infused people still show up and the already-mentioned push me over, where Morris sounds like she’s glowing in the fun of the arrangements. She concurs, “With the songs you’ve mentioned, those were really fun to make. They were just really warm; just laid-back days in the studio, when you align creatively with people.”

Adding that those two songs are very different, Morris took pride in the recording process, which allowed her “to be weird and try every random idea” that popped into her head, whether it was vocally, lyrically, or musically. Plus, she found herself trusting her co-writers and producers, including Jack Antonoff and Laura Veltz.

She reflects on the recording process, “We were at Electric Lady [Studios] in New York City, which is an iconic studio, and he’s [Antonoff] just doing all the bells and whistles and laying down every track, every instrument. It’s [people still show up] going to be a fun one live, for sure. And then push me over is like, such a sort of bisexual anthem. I wouldn’t have had the bravery to put a song like that out two years ago. So, yeah, there’s a lot of fun and empowerment with this album.”

All five songs from the deeply personal Intermission EP feature on Morris’s new album. Speaking on the lessons she took from collaborator Julia Michaels, Morris says she drew from her personal appreciation of Michaels and that she learned something new with each session.

“I’ve been such a fan of Julia’s for a decade of her solo career, but also her co-writing credits,” Morris tells. “She’s just such a special human in every song that she is a part of, and I feel like that’s why artists beg to work with her. But, I mean, I learned something each time I wrote with Julia. The way her brain works is so interesting.

“She’s fearless, but she’s just got insanely good instincts for what works. She just has such a cadence and a style about her that you can always tell when it’s a Julia Michaels song. And then, in the process of just being obsessed with each other musically, we’ve become friends over the years, and I did feature on her song, scissors, a couple of months ago, which was really fun to do the video for. But now, we’re just supporting each other in any way we can; she’s such a good person and just talented as hell.”

The match of Morris and Michaels is perfect, as even at her most country, the former has a voice, cadence, and storytelling abilities that are also perfect for pop music. Morris admits that even if she’s writing a pop-sounding song, her vocals, particularly on certain vowels, remain Southern. “That’s not something I can really change about the way I sing, but I love it,” she laughs.

Morris continues, “It’s hard to pinpoint what the genre is. It’s just about the emotion and the delivery, but yeah… With this record, it’s kind of going back to my roots, in a way, but then really being ambitious with the sound and the vocals.

“I did so many hours of layering and ad libs and stacks of harmonies and chords that felt weird, but then I wanted to challenge myself and not be on autopilot, because I always sing my own harmonies on all my records. I wanted to try new things that made me think, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting take.’ I just wanted to be really fearless about it.”

In addition to its collaborations and explorations of this new phase of her life, D R E A M S I C L E finds Morris enjoying the bumpy ride of life with people who love her. Outlining the mission of the album, she reveals that leaving her ego at the door and focusing on serving the song was essential to the songwriting and recording process.

Not only does Morris’s mindset mean that her records don’t contain filler, but it also allows for mining deeper wells of her artistry.

“I think my mission each time I sit down to write is to leave ego out of it,” Morris explains. “Leave ego at the door and just serve the song. I think that’s why, you know, in my records, there’s not some weird addition of filler music; it’s all really intentional.

“I just obsess over track listings for months to put a cohesive project together. It was such an important process and experience to make this album, because I learned a lot about myself in ways that I didn’t realise I functioned as a writer. I feel like I went further into the well of honesty, vulnerability, [and] humour.

“That’s why I love country music: you can be clever and also wrap something deeply emotional into something. That may be a funny way of saying it, but I think ultimately, I just want to be more honest with myself each time I make an album, so that’s not always easy.”

She adds, “There were days and nights I did for this project that were, you know, I wanted to maybe cancel because I was just going through a lot in my personal life, but I’m so glad I gave myself the time to heal, but also the time to heal in the studio and write about it. So, it is a very visceral, emotional record, even though there are these pockets of lightness. That was the balance I was trying to strike.”

Maren Morris will tour Australia in January and February 2026. You can find tickets via the TEG Live website. D R E A M S I C L E is out now via Columbia/Sony Music Australia.