Maren Morris Seemingly Addresses 'Rot' in Country Music With New Songs 'The Tree' & 'Get the Hell Out of Here'

Maren Morris seemingly takes aim at the state of country music with the release of her new songs “The Tree” and “Get the Hell Out of Here.”

The 33-year-old “The Bones” musician unveiled the dual singles and their accompanying music videos on Friday (September 15). Together they comprise an EP titled The Bridge, which Maren described as “a bridge to my next album” on Instagram.

“As I’ve been working on my record nonstop this year, I realized these two songs deserved a moment of their own – a story in their own right, written a day apart from each other.”

She continued, saying that she has come to “welcome, celebrate and grieve the changes that have happened these last few years,” adding, “These two songs say it better than I ever could in a caption or interview.”

Lyrically, the songs appear to address Maren‘s conflicted thoughts on country music and its conservative bias. The accompanying visuals present a similar thought process, and some believe that they take aim at fellow country star Jason Aldean and his controversial song “Small Town.”

Head inside to check out both of Maren Morris’ new songs and videos…

On “The Tree,” Maren alludes to moving on from a system that is already falling apart.

“I’m done fillin’ a cup with a hole in the bottom / I’m takin’ an axe to the tree,” she sings. “The rot at the roots is the root of the problem / But you wanna blame it on me.”

On the chorus, she addresses a “new wind blowin’” and vows to continue growing and evolving.

“I wrote this on the 10 year anniversary of my moving to Nashville. It’s about a toxic ‘family tree’ burning itself to the ground,” she explained on Instagram. “Halfway through, I realize it’s burning itself down without any of my help. This song evokes the pain of exhausting all your love and time for this person or ‘entity’ but realizing it’s just a draining, transactional relationship that isn’t nourishing in any healthy way. By the end of the song, I give myself permission to face the sun, plant new seeds where it’s safer to grow and realize that sometimes there IS greener grass elsewhere.”

That story plays out in the accompanying music video, where Maren appears to take a match to the tree in the center of a small town before watching it burn down.

Her story continues in “Get the Hell Out of Here.”

“I’ve gone against the grain and good advice / I drank my weight to dehydrate the thoughts that flood my mind / So to all my grand apologies I know are insincere / Go on, get the hell out of here,” she sings.

The video picks up where the latter left off and shows ashes covering the city. One house covered in darkness has a sign that reads “Go Woke, Go Broke” in front of it.

In contrast, Maren sings about moving on in a peaceful meadow.

“This is the aftermath of the tree burning. Being quite literally burned out, this is a story of me feeling pulled in every direction, needing everyone else’s understanding and acceptance but my own and how self-destructive that ultimately became,” she explained on social media. “I relinquish control of trying to change everyone’s mind or bad faith behavior and focus on my own power going forward. Doing the right thing can feel lonely at times, but there are more friends than foes, so I finally quit making myself one of them.”

What do the songs mean for Maren?

“These two songs are incredibly key to my next step because they express a very righteously angry and liberating phase of my life these last couple of years, but also how my navigation is finally pointing towards the future, whatever that may be or sound like,” she explained in a statement shared with Variety. “Honoring where I’ve been and what I’ve achieved in country music, but also freely moving forward.”

Maren has long been an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and engaged in a public feud with Jason‘s wife Brittany, who made allegedly transphobic comments.

Her stances have also drawn criticism from conservative personality Tucker Carlson, but Maren turned his insults upside down to support causes that she believes in.

Press play on Maren Morris’ new music…