'Proud to be misogynistic and racist': Grammy-winner blames 'Trump years' for country music exit

Country music star Maren Morris is officially parting ways with the genre due to its "misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic" ways, WFAA reports she said in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times.

According to CNN, the 33-year-old Grammy-winning singer hinted "at the decision in two new songs and music videos released on Friday: 'The Tree' and 'Get The Hell Out Of Here.'"

WFAA notes, "In 'The Tree,' she sings that she's "taking an axe to the tree, the rot at the roots is the root of the problem, But you wanna blame it on me, I hung around longer than anyone should," and "In “'Get The Hell Out Of Here,' Morris sings, 'I do the best I can, but the more I hang around here, the less I give a damn.'"

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Morris also emphasized that "she resents music being used as a 'toxic weapon in culture wars.'"

LA Timesreports:

It's not that Morris, 33, has tired of twanging guitars or neatly cornered rhymes, both of which define the tunes that came out Friday, a decade after she moved to Nashville from her native Texas, first to write songs for established country acts such as Tim McGraw and later to sign a major-label record deal of her own. Rather, she says she's leaving because of what she views as the country music industry’s 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.

Regarding the genre, the singer-songwriter told the newspaper, "I thought I'd like to burn it to the ground and start over. But it's burning itself down without my help."

She added, "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."

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WFAA's full report is available at this link. The Los Angeles Times' report is here.