GIRL, Maren Morris Is Going on Tour

It’s not Sunday, but it sure is time for church. “My Church,” specifically: Maren Morris is going on tour, y’all.

The country-pop singer-songwriter and producer released her latest and second album, GIRL, in 2019, for which she took home Album of the Year at the Country Music Awards. She’ll be kicking off her tour in support of the album at the Houston Rodeo on March 7, and touring the U.S. and Canada through October, joined by supporting acts James Arthur, Caitlyn Smith and Ryan Hurd (who happens to be Maren’s fellow country singer husband).

Morris rose to Houston Rodeo-level fame (we’re serious, y’all, that’s a big-ass rodeo) with lead single “My Church” on her 2015 self-titled EP and 2016 first full-length album Hero. “I listen to everything … except country” folks may know her from her feature on Zedd’s 2018 pop chart-topper “The Middle.”

Somewhere between a Kacey Musgraves and a Carrie Underwood, the Arlington, Texas, native blends a country voice with pop sensibilities, and her often-irreverent lyrics suggest she feels unburdened by the overly precious manners of either genre. She declares vibing to music in her car “my church,” says all her favorite people “spend what they made last week on a tank of gas and a little bit of weed,” and kicks off the ostensibly empowering titular track of GIRL by singing, “Man, this shit’s unflattering.”

Morris’s embrace of the country tradition from a progressive standpoint (which is to say, a “you do your thing and I’ll do mine” ethos) follows in the footsteps of artists like the Dixie Chicks, Musgraves and The Highwomen (the all-women country group of which Morris is also a part, who released their self-titled debut album in 2019), who in turn inherited an outlaw attitude from the original Highwaymen supergroup.