I love playing with my dog and just sitting on the patio with people I don't get to see very often anymore. I'm a pretty simple gal.
— Maren Morris
There's no real high like finishing a new song, playing it a thousand times in your car, and freaking out with your co-writers.
It definitely is an ice breaker going into the awards already having one, and it was just so crazy when I heard I did win because I was in London at the time, and we were doing a festival out there, and my manager was like, 'You just won an ACM.' And I was like, 'How? It's so early!'
The songs will come as they come, and I'm excited because I haven't gotten to be really creative in a while. I'm excited to get back and do what I do and just write a song.
That's the whole point is just to bring people together in a really positive way and laugh together and cry together and just be connected through a simple thing of a few chords.
I'm just so used to music videos or live TV, so to really see something that's scripted and you have to do it over and over again to get every angle - it's fascinating to me. I would love to do a little acting.
I just love when girls rock short hair, because they can't hide behind anything. I feel more empowered with short hair.
I'm not this bright-eyed 17-year-old that got signed to a label and is listening to all these suits tell them the best plan of action.
Even when a drunk guy, a program director, was slurring his words and telling me what to do with my career, I didn't react to him in a negative way. You kind of have to joke back with them to put them in their place.
A lot of new artists, especially girl artists, feel pressure to be so 'media perfect' and 'trained.' I'm intelligent, but I don't like hearing regurgitated answers in interviews that sound so rehearsed.
You need someone there that gets what you're going through.
Just to be nominated, and especially as a new artist and a female artist, is a feat. Winning anything is just a bonus.
Sheryl Crow. I loved her 'Tuesday Night Music Club.' She expressed her own point of view, and she wasn't trying to be like anyone else, and I loved that. That's been the thinking of all my favorite artists.
I care about women's rights and reproductive rights and my gay friends being able to keep their marriages official. You don't want your genre to disown you for it - and I don't think they would now - but you still see that sort of hatred and vitriol that comes with disagreeing with the conservative agenda.
In Texas, it's legal for a kid to be in a bar with your parents.
I feel like when I get into most rooms, melodies come really easily to me, and they sound good in my head. I never really know until I hear the song back and it's finished if it actually is good.
I think I've learned how to be a better boss. I'm the one running the show now, and in the past, I've always kind of been looking at other people to make the decisions. I feel more confident to run not just my show, but behind the scenes, too.
I missed being onstage behind the microphone. After a while, it was hard to hear another voice singing my lyrics.
I would love to see Regina Spektor, Bjork, and some really cool-sounding festival bands like 'Metric' and 'The Cardigans,' who are one of my favorite bands.
Performing with Thomas Rhett our song 'Craving You,' I'm so excited for the fans to see it and sort of see our worlds come together because I feel like he's sort of a genre pusher and boundary pusher, and I feel the same way about my music.
There's no grace period between album one and album two.
There are the aesthetic pressures for a woman to be pretty and sexy, but not sexual or have desires beyond winning a guy's affections.
Even though I was playing myself on 'NCIS,' it was so cool to see how everything works behind a camera.
Maybe someday there will be a song I write that I never let see the light of day because I don't want it to be uncontainable and have to play it again. And I have written songs like that that are just for me. It's like writing a letter to someone you're angry at but never sending it and just putting it in a drawer.
I think about the people that I've seen change because they believed in their own hype. I just never want that to happen to me.
At my shows, I've been fortunate to see every walk of life.
The art of songwriting is just stumbling your way to something really special, and you don't know what you're going to write until you are writing it. There is no formula. And, sometimes, you really have to work at it and hunker down.
'Mr. Misunderstood' - that whole album is incredible and just has amazing songwriting.
I'm just getting back into my songwriting groove. It's still pretty early. But I don't want to make 'Hero 2.' It's going to be different.
My scope on what's good is if I like it. The first person I have to please is myself.
I think if you listen to my album, you could probably gather that I am not the most gung-ho conservative-ideology-leaning person.
You can't be rolling into town with stars in your eyes. A lot of people get to Nashville and immediately start selling themselves: 'Let's go to lunch and talk about the business!' Then you realize everyone is talented here.
I've paved this road myself, and no one else has walked it the same exact way that I have. There are people that helped kick the door in, but it's really satisfying to be in a place where you know who you are and you've figured yourself out.
I think I just knew in my head there was something special about 'My Church,' and getting to accept a Grammy for it was just proof that I made the right decision.
They say it can all change with one song, and in my case, that rings very true, I was shocked that it happened this quickly.
I feel like it's improving a little bit as we go on, but I've never been to Lilith Fair. It always seemed so cool that it was started by women, for women, and it was a safe place to go and hear all of your favorite female acts in one space.
There's Kelsea Ballerini, myself... Lauren Alaina, Raelynn, and there's been this influx of really amazing artists who happen to be women. I think I'm not really attached to the females in country conversation as much anymore, but I think, you know, we're here to stay, and we've always been here, and we've always been good.
I grew up listening to a lot of classic country, and I think that shows in my songwriting.
You either have to sing about being scorned by a lover or sing about thinking a boy is cute and wanting him to notice you. That's about as edgy as you can get.
Obviously, writing together is very intimate because it's sort of acting where you need to get to a really deep place to get the most emotional song.
If I got dropped tomorrow or every single I released from now on tanked, I'd be devastated, but I'd also still be doing this. I'd still be writing songs. I'd still be recording them. I was doing that for four years in Nashville. This is just on a larger stage.
I think more guys should wake up and realize we're equal. You don't have to take care of me.
When I look at most lineups, especially in country, women are definitely lacking in numbers.
I was 14, and I played this club that's no longer there because it was poorly managed: the Texas Tea House in Fort Worth.
It's such a changing industry, and I realize that it's become more digital- and singles-driven, but I still love listening to a full record. It's the artist's story captured in 12 or 15 songs.
My songs have some street talk in them, but that's the way I talk and the way a lot of people I know talk.
I don't know if there's something in the water in Texas, but there's a lot of us really ballsy women that have something to say.
I'm a control freak, even though I can be scatterbrained off stage. The only way I can have fun is if I know where everything is.
I remember thinking the Nineties were uncool: 'I landed in the generation where nothing happens.'
I've learned how to be a better performer on stage and interact with the fans, make it feel like a collective experience more than just me singing songs on a stage and feeling really detached.
