Singer Maren Morris claimed the "Trump years" exposed the bigoted views of people in the country music industry which led to her giving up on the genre.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times on Friday, the "Get the Hell Out of Here" singer spoke about her transition from country music over the last year. She primarily blamed what she called "the Trump years" for allowing people to feel "proud" for being "misogynistic and racist" in their music.
"After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display. It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic. All these things were being celebrated, and it was weirdly dovetailing with this hyper-masculine branch of country music. I call it butt rock," Morris said.
She also dismissed the rise of songs like "Try That in a Small Town" insisting, "People are streaming these songs out of spite. It’s not out of true joy or love of the music. It’s to own the libs. And that’s so not what music is intended for. Music is supposed to be the voice of the oppressed — the actual oppressed. And now it’s being used as this really toxic weapon in culture wars."
Not everyone agreed with Morris’ view. Country music critic Kyle "Trigger" Coroneos, who founded Saving Country Music in 2008 to help promote independent musicians, suggested that the singer may be "spending too much time in her social media mentions."
"I really don't know what she's talking about there because, I think when it comes to country music, I think most of the artists, especially in the mainstream of the genre, they don't want to be politically acrimonious in any way. It doesn't help them. They're trying to build the largest audience that they possibly can. And if they do have political affiliations, they try to either keep it to themselves or they soft-pedal on it," Coroneos told FOX News Digital.
He continued, "I also think the constant hall-monitoring that Maren Morris and some other people have been participating in, especially through the COVID years and things like that, were just constantly berating people for the beliefs they have or the actions they take or the decisions they make has gotten people just where they're tired of it. They just don't want someone preaching to them about how they're supposed to think and what they're supposed to do."
Morris was one of many critics who attacked fellow country singer Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany, after she wrote a social media post thanking her parents for not changing her gender as a kid.
"I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life," Brittany Aldean wrote.
Morris responded, "It's so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie."
Morris also wrote, "You know, I’m glad she didn’t become a boy either because we really don’t need another a--hole dude in the world. Sucks when Karens try to hide their homophobia/transphobia behind their ‘protectiveness of the children.’ Weren’t they putting their kids in ‘Biden-is-a-pedo’ shirts on social media? Sounds like a real safe way to protect them from millions of eyes!"
She continued: "F--- all the way off to Insurrection Barbie and the fellow IB’s trolling this comment section with their hypocritical, hateful a--es."
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Coroneos added that he doesn’t think her leave will impact country music, claiming that Morris has more of "an outsized footprint in the media."
"I think if it has any effect, it'll have kind of a deleterious effect for the causes that she's espousing, because I think, if anything, it will help lend to country music being more of a right leaning format in regards to politics, which is kind of where the momentum and the trend is taking it," Coroneos said.
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