INTERVIEW: Maren Morris on New Single ‘Circles Around this Town’

Circles Around This Town” is special because it’s probably the most specifically autobiographical song I’ve ever written. All the songs that I write are about my story, but this one was very specific to my journey from Texas to Nashville nine years ago to become a songwriter, which then led in to me becoming an artist that I am today, but I wasn’t sure the day that we wrote it if I was willing to get that specific in a song because at the end of the day, you want it to be your story, but you want it to apply to everyone in some way where they can hear themselves in it, but I just decided to go for it, and I felt like that was the smartest thing and the most emotional thing was just even though this song is super upbeat and jangly, it’s really about keeping the gas pedal down on your dreams.

Writing this song during 2020, I was very stuck in this time loop, like the rest of the world, and trying to be to write, but it was hard because everything was shut down, we couldn’t tour. I was not good at Zoom co-writing, I sucked at it. I really need to just be in the room with people. So, when we wrote “Circles Around This Town”, I was writing in-person, safely with my husband, Ryan and Julia Michaels and our friend Jimmy Robbins, who I wrote “The Bones” with, and I don’t know, I brought that title in and Julia was the one, I think, to sort of prompt me to get really specific with the narrative of that first verse and it was our first time and only time writing. I would love to keep continue writing with her because she’s amazing, but this was the only time that we had written and she just knocked it out of the park with getting really, really specific to me and getting to know me, but also putting it in the song.

And, I think once I got the demo back, I just knew that this was the first single, this was the first chapter of what this era would be for me with the third record, and it just makes me feel good to listen to. So, I hope that when listeners hear it, they can hear a bit of themselves in that story, even though it is mine. I feel like everyone’s got a daydream, everyone has a goal, and it’s really just about knowing that that target is always moving, but knowing that if it’s something you really love and you want to put the time and effort into it, it doesn’t feel like a job. I’m excited to share this song because it’s been three years since I’ve put new music out, since “Girl”, and it was all written during the past two years. I became a mother, obviously the world was in a very odd space. It still kind of is, but I needed to make this record to pull me out of the weird boredom, depression that I think every human being on this planet has had during the last couple of years. Trying to remain positive and inspired is a choice every day and it’s a hard one to make sometimes. Sometimes you just want to wallow in it, but I needed to start making music again to remind myself that this is what I’m good at and this is what I love doing, and even if I couldn’t tour it at the time I was writing it, I felt like it was keeping me busy and it was ultimately pulling me out of whatever pool I was drowning in. So, it’s a really inspiring project, but the song “Circles Around This Town” is just the perfect preamble to the rest of the record, which I can’t wait for you to hear.

The day that we wrote “Circles Around This Town” was in the fall of 2020. So, I had kind of given up on the Zoom co-writing job and I was deeply uninspired by that. I cannot write through a screen with people and not feel their energy or the sound of the music that we’re playing. I need to be in person, so we waited till we could do it safely. Julia Michaels flew to Nashville that week and I was one of her writes and it was our first time writing together and I’m obviously such a huge Julia fan, of her solo project, but also her co-writing and songwriting in general. She’s a genius of our day, but we were just getting to know each other in the room and I brought this title, “Circles Around This Town” to her, and it just felt like such a songwriter-y song because it’s literally about me coming to Nashville nine years ago to try to write a bunch of great songs to outdo everyone in this town and quickly realising I need to get in line and Julia is just such a writer’s writer and this fell out of the write that day and she’s actually singing backgrounds on it, so is Ryan, her and my husband, and it just felt like such a great collaboration between songwriters that I respect so deeply and I’m a fan of to write a song such as “Circles Around This Town”.