Maren Morris hascrossed over from country to pop with songs like “The Middle” and “The Bones,” but the singer revealed in a new interview that she’s not too keen on pop stars crossing over to country.

“I think people like cosplaying at it or doing it because it’s trendy,” she says in a new interview with TZR. “That’s never been me. You can Google my history very easily and find articles from the Star-Telegram when I was 10, and you’ll see the same little girl playing the guitar, singing country music.”
And while she’s a bit critical of those pop stars donning cowboy hats and delving into country music, she’s defending her own crossover from the country music establishment to the pop world.
“Country music is not a classroom that you just leave,” she explains to the outlet. “It’s a family. It’s a sound. It’s a feeling. It’s an emotion. That’s not what I meant when I was going through that transition. It was about: ‘Do I want to put my life’s work in the hands of some of these gatekeepers of mainstream country music?’”

In a 2023 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris previously announced that she was leaving country music due to its “unwillingness to honestly reckon with its history of racism and misogyny and to open its gates to more women and queer people and people of color.”

Morris is promoting her fourth studio album, Dreamsicle, which will be released on Friday, May 9.