Maren Morris tends to outdo herself. In 2016, she was booked for an early afternoon slot on Bonnaroo’s Who Stage, a small setup typically reserved for emerging acts. By the time the festival rolled around, Morris had a No. 1 country album with Hero and a rising single in “My Church,” speeding right past that “emerging” descriptor before it had time to stick. Her performance also felt far larger than that small stage. Her dynamic, powerful voice and hit-packed set list suggested those of a more seasoned artist and signaled a truly exciting new presence in country music.
Since then, Morris has become a fixture in both country and pop music, touring the globe and churning out hits like the Grammy-nominated “The Bones” and a massive, multiplatinum crossover collaboration with Zedd and Grey called “The Middle.” She won a Grammy for “My Church” and has enough ACM and CMA Awards to fill a trophy case. And in 2019, months after the release of her second album Girl, she co-founded country supergroup The Highwomen alongside Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires, to cheers of joy from the country community and beyond.
On Friday, Morris returns with her third studio album, Humble Quest, her most assured release yet. Sonically, Humble Quest skews less pop than Hero or Girl, pulling back on production in favor of letting Morris’ lyrics and voice shine. Thematically, the album grapples with both her quick ascent to stardom and her changing personal life, including her marriage to fellow artist Ryan Hurd and the birth of the pair’s first child in 2020. Speaking from her home in Nashville after performing at both the ACM Awards and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Morris says she was driving around town when the words “humble quest” popped into her head.
“It was just something that came, honestly, from the sky,” Morris tells the Scene. “And I think a similar thing happened when I wrote ‘My Church.’ That whole concept fell out of the clouds.”
Appropriately enough, she introduces Humble Quest with the reflective and infectious lead single “Circles Around This Town,” which connects her early days in Nashville writing songs and barely scraping by to her present-day stardom. Accordingly, the tune has a few fun Easter eggs, like lyrics that reference earlier hits “My Church” and “80s Mercedes,” as she sings: “Couple hundred songs and the ones that finally worked / Was the one about a car and the one about a church.”
Morris performed the song at the ACM Awards, officially kicking off the Humble Quest era with a song that is, well, full-circle. And her Houston Rodeo set marked her return to live performance in earnest after the disruptions COVID-19 caused the music industry, with a similar dose of happenstance thrown in for good measure.
“It was such a release,” Morris says of the rodeo show. “Not just for the band and myself, but for the crowd. Because if I’m correct, I think I was the last show at the Houston Rodeo in 2020, before they had to cancel because of the pandemic. … Every time I get to see my band, especially in the last few years, it feels like pieces of myself are coming back.”
Both the pandemic and new motherhood shaped Humble Quest, but it’s also Morris’ first album without contributions from close friend and celebrated producer Michael Busbee (known professionally as busbee), who died from glioblastoma in September 2019. To helm the record in busbee’s absence, Morris tapped Grammy-winning producer and Girl collaborator Greg Kurstin. Some will remember him from ’90s rock band Geggy Tah, but he’s probably better known for his work with artists like Kendrick Lamar, Foo Fighters and, perhaps most famously, Adele.
“He should be a bigger asshole than he is, for what he’s done,” Morris says of Kurstin, laughing. “But I love that about him. He’s so down-to-earth, and he’s just a music nerd. He’s a jazz nerd.”
“She’s so natural,” Kurstin says of Morris, calling from his home in Los Angeles. “There’s this confidence there too, where she’s not worrying about what she’s doing. There’s something so cool about that, that confidence that she knows she can do it. She doesn’t have to prove it in the room or anything. She just owns it.”
Working with a new producer often yields experimentation, and Morris’ collaboration with Kurstin led to her most stripped-down album yet. Where Hero had shades of soul and R&B and Girl explored arena-ready pop, Humble Quest is earthy, rootsy and certainly Morris’ most traditionally “country”-sounding record thus far. Its closest relative in Morris’ catalog is The Highwomen, though Humble Quest is a decidedly more intimate, introspective affair.
“They’re not overly dressed-up with production or beats,” Morris says of the songs on Humble Quest. “They’re organic and they feel really natural. And I feel like that can only come from someone who is taking the shroud off and just being themselves — being humbled, but also not giving two shits how people perceive you.”
While Morris’ ACM Awards performance rightfully earned praise, most chatter following the ceremony centered on something she did off the stage. She stayed seated and refrained from applauding when Morgan Wallen — who was infamously caught using the N-word on video in early 2021, sparking outrage far and wide for both the incident itself and his half-hearted efforts at making amends — won Album of the Year for Dangerous: The Double Album. The next day, she tweeted a photo of herself on the ACM red carpet, shading her eyes from the sun, with the caption, “Me searching for a fuck to give.”
“It’s probably a very, very loud minority of people that come after me for anything I do,” she says. “I think it’s kind of humorous at this point, because you just have no control over it. Like, any word or action or face that you make is scrutinized. But I always know where my heart is, and where my intentions lie. And I stand up — or I sit down — for what I believe in.”
The pandemic was a turning point for Morris, who had worked — whether touring, writing or recording — practically nonstop since Hero’s release in 2016. With the live music industry shut down and a new baby at home, Morris was forced into stillness for the first time since her early days hustling in Nashville. It was a welcome if unplanned reprieve for Morris, who describes her time touring in support of Girl as “anxiety-ridden.”
“You feel like you have to say yes to every opportunity, especially in the beginning of your career, because you just don’t know if it’s ever gonna come around again,” she says. “There’s that very perpetual hustle period. That came to a screeching halt when COVID hit for me, even though I was established with my second record. It was that kind of in-between time of not being the new kid on the block anymore, but still having only released two albums.”
You can feel that newfound sense of spaciousness on Humble Quest, almost as though it were an instrument itself. Morris is as relaxed and sure of herself as she’s ever been, and the music reaps those benefits. The funny, John Prine-esque “I Can’t Love You Anymore” is Morris at her most playful. “Nervous” is all ’90s alt-rock swagger, like a Shirley Manson song performed by Sheryl Crow. “Background Music,” which boasts some of the album’s best lyrics, recognizes the fleeting nature of fame in favor of the endurance of deep, intimate love — with killer melodies to boot.
The showpiece of the album is its title track, a vulnerable exploration of Morris’ attempts to keep her feet on the ground while her star continues to rise. In a clear-eyed meditation on reconciling artistry with celebrity, she sings, “The line between fulfilled and full of myself / I’m trying to find it and might need some help.”
While Morris had a vision for Humble Quest at the project’s outset, she credits Kurstin with helping find the right soundscape to bring it to life. It was Kurstin’s first time producing a full-length country project, and his own curiosity lends spontaneity and spirit to the songs’ arrangements.
“Before I even knew who Greg Kurstin was, I was such a huge fan of those first two Lily Allen records,” she says. “And it’s just so funny that he did that too, as most people just know him as ‘the Adele guy’ or ‘the Foo Fighters or Paul McCartney dude.’ But I remember being obsessed with those Lily Allen albums. And his own band, The Bird and the Bee, is incredible.”
The admiration goes both ways. One of Morris’ greatest vocal strengths is her command of dynamics, something Kurstin singles out in conversation. Though she can belt with the best of them, she knows instinctively when to pull back and use restraint, a technique that only underscores the moments when she really lets it rip. That quality is especially evident across Humble Quest, like on the standout “Hummingbird.” Morris uses the lower register of her voice during the song’s verses, letting it swell to a reedy crescendo at each chorus.
“It’s just really cool, how subtle she knows how to be,” Kurstin says. “She gives those moments at the right time. She never overdoes it. It’s always the perfect amount of soft and the perfect amount of belting. She’s just so natural.”
Kurstin too offered Morris a reprieve from the hustle-and-grind culture of Nashville, which can at times focus more on chart positions than challenging one’s creativity. While it would be tempting to try to replicate the success of an earlier hit, Morris is more concerned with growing her artistry and making music that feels true to who she is and what she’s experiencing in her own life.
“Sometimes I’ll get into rooms of people for the first time and, knowing who I am, they’ll be like, ‘What do you need?’ ” she says. “ ‘What do you need for this next record? Do you need something country? Do you need something more pop? Let’s do ‘The Bones.’ Let’s do a ‘Bones’ vibe.’ And I’ll be like, ‘Um, no, I already did that.’ … But [Kurstin] isn’t coming in with these giant pressures or expectations that I think a lot of, like, songwriters or track guys can put upon an artist. He doesn’t need to impress me. He’s Greg Kurstin. We’re just there to get the best song.”
“I never really like to go in with too much of an agenda set,” Kurstin says. “I like to be open-minded to whatever could possibly happen in the moment. But there was something about Maren’s demos, something very organic about it. I didn’t really stray too far away from what I was hearing. I just wanted to make it sound the best that I could.”
While some of Humble Quest was recorded at Sheryl Crow’s Nashville studio, Morris and Kurstin had pivotal writing and recording sessions at his own small studio in Hawaii. As Morris explains it, the pair would spend their mornings writing together, work through the day and then gather their families for nightly dinners.
“We would get dinner with his wife and kids and my husband and my son,” she says. “I really, really got to know him in an even deeper way than on my previous record, with ‘Girl’ and ‘The Bones.’ We became friends on this project, as well, because we could really spend time with each other. And I just can’t say enough glowing things about him and his wife, Rachel. She’s a badass.”
Morris’ family life also had a profound impact on Humble Quest. She and Hurd welcomed their first child, Hayes Andrew Hurd, in March 2020. Coming in quick succession after that month’s outbreak of tornadoes in Middle Tennessee and the onset of COVID-19, new motherhood offered Morris a broader perspective — one that had her reevaluating her priorities as both an artist and a person.
“A lot of the world was having to reckon with [questions] like, ‘Are you happy with your job? Are you happy with your partner?’ ” she says. “Having touring taken away allowed me to look under the hood, for the first time, and really take stock of what was draining me and what was actually fulfilling me and filling my cup.”
Hurd has seen his own star rise in recent years too, with his 2021 album Pelago notching his first top-five single, the Morris duet “Chasing After You.” The two have long worked together — they initially got to know one another in writing sessions before either hit it big — but Humble Quest seems their most involved collaboration yet, as Hurd co-wrote four of the album’s 11 tracks. It feels like he’s the subject of many of them too.
“During the pandemic, everyone’s relationship was tested,” Morris says. “And there are songs on this record that reflect that. ‘I Can’t Love You Anymore’ is definitely a funky love song about us wanting to rip each other’s hair out. But also, no one in this world is gonna put up with my shit the way that he does. That’s real romance to me. It’s not, you know, Champagne and a nice dinner night out. It’s, ‘Oh my God, you’re gonna put up with me after this stuff? That’s better than a ring.’ ”
Morris may still feel surprise at her own success, but her friends and collaborators have long known she was meant for big things. Morris’ Highwomen bandmate Hemby is a frequent and longtime collaborator on Morris’ solo records, and co-wrote three songs on Humble Quest. She sees Morris’ rise to country stardom as inevitable.
“I think it’s easy to say that anyone who met Maren knew she would be successful in some form or fashion,” Hemby tells the Scene. “Her voice was too good, her writing was second nature, and her demeanor was that of an old soul, like she’s been doing this for years. What no one realized was that she had been doing this for years, since she was a young girl. It all just happened in perfect timing, and watching her career take off the way it did was like watching your favorite movie. I’m really proud and happy for her.”
In April, Morris will hit the road in support of Humble Quest, kicking off her tour at the Stagecoach festival and continuing through the end of 2022. She’ll cap the tour in town on Dec. 2 at Bridgestone Arena. That show will be something of an outlier, as most stops will be at outdoor venues, a decision Morris and her team made both as an attempt at COVID safety and to suit the laid-back, open feel of the new music.
“We put a lot of thought into what the vibe was going to be when people walk into the venue,” she explains. “So we’re doing Red Rocks and the Hollywood Bowl for the first time as headliners. There’s a select few dates that we are doing indoors, but for the most part, we’re doing amphitheaters.”
Her decision was also influenced by that pandemic period of stillness, during which Morris realized just how much the Girl tour took out of her. She credits a Wall Street Journal interview with pop star Lorde for offering new perspective too — as well as permission to slow down and tour the way she wants to, regardless of her ability to sell out large arenas.
“I just remember having this panic attack last summer, when we were routing everything,” she says. “We had Madison Square Garden held and American Airlines Center held in Dallas. And I remember having this moment of anxiety, like, ‘I don’t think I am ready for those venues,’ just having not toured for two years. … [Lorde] said something like, ‘It’s weird to be showering in a venue that’s named after a fast-food chain, or in basketball locker room showers.’ Obviously, I’m on a different trajectory than she is, but I loved that she was so confident to say that she wanted to do slightly smaller venues, because her fans would appreciate it more.”
While Morris says it likely won’t make the live set — “It’s too emotional,” she says — one of Humble Quest’s most powerful moments is its closing track, the spare ballad “What Would This World Do?” She wrote the song with Hurd and Jon Green for busbee weeks after he learned of his diagnosis. The track is a tender, poignant snapshot of the sorrow and disbelief wrought by anticipatory grief. Morris encapsulates so well the disorienting finality of losing a loved one, as she sings: “They’d still run the evening news, and the brides will walk the aisle in June / And there’s strangers that won’t have a clue / What would this world do without you?”
“The day we wrote that, busbee was still alive,” she says. “So we were writing that from a place of hoping that he would hold on. And that’s why it’s titled the way it is, because he was still with us. And it was like, ‘Maybe if we put this energy out into the world, he’ll pull through.’… I remember the day we wrote it, just bawling through the entire thing. But it was the clearest lyrics that I’ve ever [written]. I was trying to write them as quickly as I could, because they were just spilling out. And that’s like when I feel God is there — and I don’t even know if I believe, but that is when I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ It’s spooky, the way that these songs sometimes just fall out.”
The trio recorded a work tape of the song with just piano and Morris’ voice, not unlike the simple, quiet version of the song that appears on the album. When it came time to record with Kurstin, Morris was emotional during takes, which you can hear in what’s undoubtedly one of the rawest vocal performances of her career. While she and busbee often pushed the sonic limits of country when they worked together, it felt right to her to honor his memory without any bells or whistles.
“Busbee was one of those first guys in Nashville that was blending L.A. sounds with Nashville sounds,” she says. “I do truly think the last decade of country music has been so shaped by him. Not just my music, but Keith Urban and Lady A and all the people that he collaborated with over the last 10 years. That is why country sounds this way now, in part because of him.”
Morris too has reshaped the sound of country music since she released the 2015 self-titled EP that would soon grow into Hero. Through her solo work and time with The Highwomen, she’s brought greater visibility to women country artists in an industry that still heavily favors men. And as the industry has been questioned about — and so far failed to reckon with — drastic racial inequity in recent years, she’s found ways to uplift artists of color using her platform. Among the artists supporting on her upcoming tour are Brittney Spencer and Joy Oladokun.
While she hasn’t lost the scrappy ambition that first put her on the map, Morris has found a hard-earned confidence that allows her to take things one step at a time. She’s growing more comfortable with doing things her own way and will continue to move at her own pace, learning to savor the moment instead of plotting out the next one. She’s still driving those circles around town — and she’ll likely still outdo herself from time to time — but now she knows when to pump the brakes.
“I hope to, someday, still headline Madison Square Garden,” she says. “I did not feel ready to headline those rooms. So we were like, ‘Why don’t we just do two nights at Radio City instead?’ And that’s fucking awesome. There’s nothing wrong with living in that space for a second and celebrating it.”
