Maren Morris Is Country Music’s New Hero
There was a time when I felt the unrelenting urge to justify and defend the fact that I love country music. Plenty of people listened to the genre in the small town in Oregon I grew up in, but by the time I went to live in Los Angeles as an insecure college student, I hid the fact that I knew all the words to Faith Hill and Martina McBride. Hiding my love for country was another way of hiding my working class roots, an aspect of my identity that felt beyond foreign in the milk and honeyed land of wealth and privilege that was Malibu, California. I felt the same way about my Christian background; that no matter how far I distanced myself from the language of liturgy, there were whole swathes of Biblical passages embedded in my memory. I piled dirt on those memories and furtively guarded the heap of my past. I was searching, insecure, lost–and it took a move to another city for me to reconcile the girl I was with the woman I wanted to become. It took that move to Brooklyn for me to start listening to country music again, basking in the memories of my past and forging ahead toward values I still held. This reconciliation is the first heroic act any adult embarks on.