2024-08-22 08:25:02
Maren Morris has made her opinion of former president Donald Trump and his supporters clear, and the Grammy-winning artist is taking an even stronger stance in politics with her appearance at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Wednesday night.
Morris, who announced her split from country music last year, is set to take the stage at the DNC in Chicago, Illinois, on Wednesday night. John Legend and Stevie Wonder also are expected to perform. Morris’ scheduled appearance has resurfaced comments the singer has previously made about Trump and comes as Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to officially accept the Democratic party’s nomination for the presidential election on Thursday.
Newsweek reached out to the DNC, the Trump campaign and representatives for Morris by email for comment.
In September 2023, Morris said she was moving away from country music because of the biases associated with the genre. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Morris opened up about her reasons behind distancing herself from country music.
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“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,” she said at the time. “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 also spoke openly about her struggles as a woman in country music, and about her feud with Brittany and Jason Aldean, which escalated following Jason Aldean‘s controversial track “Try That in a Small Town.” Aldean has previously voiced his support for Trump, admitting that he has “nothing but good things to say about” the former president, and telling the Los Angeles Times that it “wouldn’t hurt my feelings” if Trump landed the 2024 Republican nomination earlier this year, Newsweek previously reported.
Morris, however, holds different political views. Earlier this month in an interview with USA Today, Morris vowed to support Kamala Harris in the November election.
“I campaigned for Biden and have met Kamala and she’s a badass,” Morris told USA Today. “I feel invigorated to vote. Living in Tennessee, it feels more impactful to have that say.”
Last year, Morris pushed back against the country music genre, telling the Los Angeles Times that the way country music is sold “feels like indoctrination” and that some people are streaming country songs—such as Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town”—out of spite.
“It’s not out of true joy or love of the music. It’s to own the libs,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “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.”
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