As a country music fan, the only way to listen to the new Maren Morris album and actually enjoy it is to pretend that she didn’t release this album under the genre label ‘country.’ Genres are so old-school at this point, but there is no possible way that this album could ever be classified as country music. Morris didn’t even try. But honestly, that’s what’s so cool about her. She could have thrown some fiddles and banjo in there and gone to the traditional country community, shouting, “Look! I’m country!” But she didn’t. She just went ahead and released a pop album. Half of me thinks that’s the most badass move in the world, and half of me wants to get really angry about the fact that she’s literally dancing on Merle Haggard and George Jones’ graves by trying to market this album in a genre where it clearly doesn’t belong. It’s a fine line. But that’s it, that’s all I’m going to say about genre because if I say any more about how this record isn’t country, you’ll think I’m a fifty-five-year-old man living in his parents basement ranting about the “good ol’ days” of country music. And I like to think that I’m a progressive young woman, so I’ll cut myself off.
The Good
This record can easily be separated into the great songs and the songs that leave very little impression altogether. In the former category falls “All My Favourite People (feat. Brothers Osborne),” “The Bones,” “To Hell & Back,” and “Common (feat. Brandi Carlile). “All My Favourite People” is the best song on the record. It’s twangy and probably more Brothers Osborne than Maren Morris, but if she went with this style of song and built a record around it, she would truly be creating innovative and interesting modern country-pop rather than the record feeling like a mis-shelving. It sounds a lot like the music Morris was writing prior to getting into the groove of her debut record Hero. It’s fairly easy to find unreleased Maren Morris songs on platforms such as SoundCloud and YouTube and taking a listen to songs that never made a record like “Airplane Mode” and “Circle The Block” makes “All My Favourite People” seem very familiar. It’s easy to see the future that Morris might have had if she had suppressed her pop tendencies a bit more.
“The Bones” is a perfect pop song, with more country-flavoured lyrics layered on top of groovy, innovative melodies. An interesting trend that I’ve noticed is Morris’s tendency to cop out of a bridge on those collaborations with Kurstin. I never thought of a strong, developed bridge as being part of country song-writing, but apparently to Morris it is. I guess in a pop song, a bridge doesn’t really matter. Her voice sounds strong and comfortable, and the chorus is infectious. If Morris decides to actually jump headfirst into pop music, this should be her first solo single to pop radio.
“The Bones” is a perfect pop song, with more country-flavoured lyrics layered on top of groovy, innovative melodies. An interesting trend that I’ve noticed is Morris’s tendency to cop out of a bridge on those collaborations with Kurstin. I never thought of a strong, developed bridge as being part of country song-writing, but apparently to Morris it is. I guess in a pop song, a bridge doesn’t really matter. Her voice sounds strong and comfortable, and the chorus is infectious. If Morris decides to actually jump headfirst into pop music, this should be her first solo single to pop radio.
On the other hand, “To Hell & Back” is the closest that Morris gets to a country song (I’m sorry, last mention of genre, I promise). It’s a really beautifully written love song. A strange criticism of this album has been that the songs she’s singing don’t match her place in life right now, but why is it that women can only write and sing about what they’re going through at this exact moment? That’s taking the whole idea of song-writing as being a diary entry to a whole new level. Morris can sing about whatever she wants, even if it doesn’t align with her seemingly-happy marriage to fellow artist and songwriter Ryan Hurd. But I guess this song fulfils that bizarre expectation. It’s a happier, more grown-up version of “I Wish I Was” on HERO. “I’m not the hero in the story” has shifted to “You didn’t save me; you didn’t think I needed saving.” She furthers the idea of a hero; going from not being a hero to not needing to be a hero and not needing a hero.
While “All My Favorite People” is the best song on the record, the most interesting one, especially if you’re looking at just the lyrics, is her collaboration with Brandi Carlile. Coming from a country music background, Morris has been careful when approaching politics in her song, but she doesn’t shy away altogether. The result is a song like this that’s just vague enough that causal listeners may miss the meaning, but it’s obvious to people who care enough to really listen. It feels like a pop remake of a 60’s protest song for peace, with the hook, “We’ve got way too much in common / so what’s the point in fighting.” And Carlile is just a goddess, so her vocals on this song add a soulful, authentic layer on top of Morris’s more pop-oriented and processed vocals.
While “All My Favorite People” is the best song on the record, the most interesting one, especially if you’re looking at just the lyrics, is her collaboration with Brandi Carlile. Coming from a country music background, Morris has been careful when approaching politics in her song, but she doesn’t shy away altogether. The result is a song like this that’s just vague enough that causal listeners may miss the meaning, but it’s obvious to people who care enough to really listen. It feels like a pop remake of a 60’s protest song for peace, with the hook, “We’ve got way too much in common / so what’s the point in fighting.” And Carlile is just a goddess, so her vocals on this song add a soulful, authentic layer on top of Morris’s more pop-oriented and processed vocals.
The Mediocre
Two groups of songwriters worked on the record. The first group contains some of Morris’s old collaborators from Nashville that she wrote her first record with like Laura Veltz and Natalie Hemby. The second group, made up of Sarah Aarons and Greg Kurstin, is a more LA based group, of people Morris met through the success of “The Middle” (Aarons actually wrote “The Middle”). There isn’t really a strict division along that line, because some of the pop-iest songs on the record were actually written by Nashville writers, and there are mediocre tracks created by both groups.
Speaking of those mediocre tracks, a lot of them sound like Kehlani cuts that didn’t make the record, done with a little bit more rootsy instrumentation. Specifically, “RSVP” sounds like it accidentally made it on the record. Morris can do this kind of music well, but I think for these to be truly impressive she needs to go fully into this type of music. These tracks are scattered around the more acoustic tracks and full pop songs, in a way that they easily get lost. “Flavor” sounds like a future Top 40 hit, with a Maren Morris spin, but the “just gonna do me / you don’t have to listen” seems like a weird call out of the definite criticism that this record was going to have. Halfway through the record, she plops a song that pointedly attacks the people who will criticize the genre of the album. It’s smart, but the song feels tired. The record itself is enough; she didn’t have to spell it out so plainly. “A Song for Everything” approaches being a really good song, but I think the title kills it for me. If she had been more subtle in the idea of music being woven throughout our lives, I think this song would have been really successful. But “A Song For Everything” feels a little Radio Disney Country.
Speaking of those mediocre tracks, a lot of them sound like Kehlani cuts that didn’t make the record, done with a little bit more rootsy instrumentation. Specifically, “RSVP” sounds like it accidentally made it on the record. Morris can do this kind of music well, but I think for these to be truly impressive she needs to go fully into this type of music. These tracks are scattered around the more acoustic tracks and full pop songs, in a way that they easily get lost. “Flavor” sounds like a future Top 40 hit, with a Maren Morris spin, but the “just gonna do me / you don’t have to listen” seems like a weird call out of the definite criticism that this record was going to have. Halfway through the record, she plops a song that pointedly attacks the people who will criticize the genre of the album. It’s smart, but the song feels tired. The record itself is enough; she didn’t have to spell it out so plainly. “A Song for Everything” approaches being a really good song, but I think the title kills it for me. If she had been more subtle in the idea of music being woven throughout our lives, I think this song would have been really successful. But “A Song For Everything” feels a little Radio Disney Country.
The Verdict?
Comparing this record to Hero is an interesting task because it’s similar in a lot of ways, but very different in others. Hero felt more cohesive, likely because Morris spent a lot more time writing songs for that record and planning it all out than she did for this one. The curse of the two-year album cycle. She experiments more on this record, but it doesn’t always succeed in the way that Hero constantly succeeded and surpassed recommendations. This album has been successful so she’s managed to avoid the sophomore slump, but I think I’m likely going to spend more time excited about where she goes next after this experimental project than I will actually listening to this record.
Read at vibbidi.net.
Read at vibbidi.net.
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