Maren Morris rarely walks into the studio with a blueprint.
"It's a block of stone, and I've got the chisel," she says. "I've no idea what's going to be on the other side, but I have to get to work."
Her latest "sculpture" was carved out of a particularly tough bit of rock. Her fourth studio album, D R E A M S I C L E, is the Grammy Award-winning country star's first release since her divorce from fellow songwriter Ryan Hurd.
"He's been a part of all my albums. This was the first that he's not," Morris reflects. "In a bittersweet way, I had to say goodbye not only to that relationship but also him being my soundboard through this whole process."
But, the divorce also made space for new players. Morris enlisted some of pop's brightest hitmakers on D R E A M S I C L E. The credits include Jack Antonoff, Greg Kurstin, Julia Michaels and a particularly special collaboration with MUNA.
Morris recalls working with the Los Angeles-based indie pop trio, all of whom identify as queer.
"It was like going to a masterclass on how to date a woman," Morris said. "It was a miracle we even got a song that day because we just gabbed for probably six hours in the studio."
D R E A M S I C L E is also Morris' first album since coming out herself. "Happy to be the B in LGBTQ+," she shared in an Instagram post in June of 2024.
"There was some nagging weight on me, and I couldn't pinpoint what it was," she says. "You suppress so much because there are so many other things at the forefront going on, and you don't want to jeopardize something or make somebody uncomfortable. [Coming out] was me accepting and celebrating in a public way that part of myself that has always been there, but I didn't feel brave enough to share."
Another first Morris chronicles on D R E A M S I C L E? After several years of marriage, she's dating again.
"I feel like a Martian," she says. "I don't know how anything works, how dynamics work. Dating is an interesting funhouse mirror of how you perceive yourself. It's an audition or an interview."
That kind of unfiltered self-awareness shows up everywhere on the album. On "bed no breakfast," she extolls the joy of waking up in your own bed, alone.
"After I've had a night with someone, I really want them to go back to their own house," she says. "I don't want them staying over because I think I've reclaimed this independence. I have my own place. Everything in the house is mine. Everything in the bathroom counter is mine. In the kitchen. The coffee I like. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and have to continue this interview. I just want you to get your Uber and go home."
Morris has also found that motherhood has widened her creative lens. Songs like "because, of course" were penned for her son, Hayes.
"[Motherhood] is a lesson in empathy," she says. "You're seeing something through another person's perspective, and it's a child. It's a weird dichotomy of empathizing with a 2-year-old, but in some ways, you also get to heal your inner child."
Inspired by her son, Morris recently lent her voice to the 2024 animated film The Wild Robot, recording a song for a pivotal moment in the Oscar-nominated movie about a shipwrecked robot named Roz and an orphaned goose named Brightbill.
"In this scene, he finally learns to fly. He's going off with all the geese, and [Roz] is left on the island alone," Morris says. "It's so gutting. Every time I watch that scene, I bawl my eyes out. It just makes me think of when Hayes is going to go off to college."
That's still a ways away, but Morris admits that she occasionally worries she's missing out on life while it's happening. After all, D R E A M S I C L E's title track, written in rush in the dead of night, is about trying to enjoy the sweetness life has to offer before it melts away.
"All things eventually end," she says. "If you just accept that, the grief part of it is allowed to dissipate. You're a little bit more free to be present and enjoy something as it's happening."
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
Copyright 2025 XPN
