Maren Morris May Skip the 2022 CMAs After Her Spat With Jason and Brittany Aldean
Country music singer Maren Morris released her third studio album Humble Quest in March 2022, with the LP earning a nomination for Album of the Year at the 2022 Country Music Association Awards. But despite Morris’ nomination at country’s biggest night, the singer is debating whether she should go to the ceremony at all.
Maren Morris got in a social media spat with Brittany and Jason Aldean
It all started in August 2022, when Brittany Aldean, wife of country star Jason Aldean, shared a post on Instagram thanking her parents for not changing her gender as a child. After singer Cassadee Pope expressed her thoughts on Twitter, Morris aired out her thoughts in response to Pope’s tweet.
“It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human?” Morris tweeted. “Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”
Aldean doubled down on her position in a subsequent appearance on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, with Carlson labeling Morris a “lunatic” whom he hoped would quit country music after the incident. For his part, Jason Aldean assented with his wife in her Instagram comments.
Morris decided to make lemons out of lemonade. She began selling a new T-shirt in her merch store with her name and the words “Lunatic Country Music Person” along with the phone number for the Peer Support & Crisis Hotline for trans youth. She raised over $100,000 for the Trans Lifeline thanks to the shirt.
Maren Morris might not show up at the 2022 CMAs
Even though Morris made good out of the situation with the Aldeans, she’s still left feeling like an outsider in country music. She told the Los Angeles Times that she’s debating going to the CMAs just on the off-chance that she runs into the country power couple.
“Honestly, I haven’t decided if I’m gonna go. I’m very honored that my record is nominated. But I don’t know if I feel [at] home there right now. So many people I love will be in that room, and maybe I’ll make a game-time decision and go. But as of right now, I don’t feel comfortable going,” she said. “I think I was more sad going last year. Some nights are fun. Others I’m just crawling out of my skin. I’m not good at those events because I’m awkward. But this time I kind of feel peaceful at the notion of not going.”
She admitted that she felt like she had to be the “hall monitor” of hate in country music and that “it’s exhausting” to push for “treating people like human beings in country music.”
“There’s a very insidious culture of people feeling very comfortable being transphobic and homophobic and racist, and that they can wrap it in a joke and no one will ever call them out for it,” Morris said. “It just becomes normal for people to behave like that.”
Standing up for trans rights is important for Maren Morris
A few weeks after her initial spat with Brittany Aldean, Morris announced that she was partnering with LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD to design a new shirt for Spirit Day.
Morris explained in an interview with GLAAD about why fighting for LGBTQ causes is so important to her.
“My mom was really close to her uncle growing up, who sadly died in the early ’90s of AIDS. And so it was just always a conversation in our household that we’re all the same,” she said. “And there is no ‘us and you.’ So I think that being instilled in me from such an early age — particularly growing up in the South — was really important.”
Morris went on to discuss gender-affirming care and how many people, including the Aldeans, misunderstand the life-saving treatment for youth.
“Sadly, there are a lot of people that believe things that are just completely untrue about trans youth and gender-affirming care and what it actually entails,” she said. “We talk about having these hard conversations and doing it with a loving heart. Yeah, I think at the core, you’re coming from a good place. But I don’t think that you can do this all the time with, like, sunshine and rainbows. I think you have to have the tough conversations so people understand what’s actually going on, and you could actually save someone’s life having the right information.”
