In 2026, Maren Morris will mark a decade spent in the spotlight.
The Arlington native’s major label debut, Hero, turns 10 next year. It’s mildly daunting to consider just how radically her profile has risen in such a relatively short span of time.
The weight of living her life in the full glare of public view is an unspoken, but very much evident thread coursing through her fourth major label record, Dreamsicle, out now.
There was ample speculation prior to Dreamsicle’s release as to whether the 35-year-old singer-songwriter would delve into any number of personal developments which materialized in between 2022’s Humble Quest and this record, be it her divorce from singer-songwriter Ryan Hurd, coming out as bisexual or publicly distancing herself from the country music genre, due to its continued perpetuation of misogyny and racism.
Instead, Morris largely turns inward, pointing her peerless pen at the broken and bruised parts of herself in need of healing, understanding and love. It’s her strongest front-to-back work since Hero, and a vivid reminder of her profoundly empathic skill as a songwriter.
“This record has been a slow melt — a swirl of memories, longing, growth and the sweet, sometimes bittersweet flavors of becoming,” Morris wrote in a release-day note to fans. “These songs were written in moments of clarity and chaos, laughter and loss and in the quiet in-betweens where we learn who we really are. Dreamsicle is a love letter to the messy, beautiful process of healing and dreaming again.
“It’s about the colors of nostalgia, the glow of independence and learning to hold joy and pain in the same breath.”
The irony of Morris’s having fully broken with country music is that Dreamsicle contains more than a few moments which genuflect in Nashville’s direction.
“Too Good” needs only a fiddle or pedal steel to kick it all the way over — Morris’s punchy vocals glide gorgeously along the to-and-fro beat — while “Carry Me Through” carries powerful echoes of her breakthrough hit single “My Church,” an emotionally charged ballad devastating in its intimacy: “I’ve looked every direction for a good way to climb out/Maybe my reflection’s the only one who can help me now.”
That Morris has also, in her way, subverted the expectations accompanying the “divorce album” is keeping in line with her surety of her perspective. While she could’ve easily unloaded a series of combustible, vicious songs, doing so would have masked the complicated nature of broken relationships and the realities making drastic changes can reveal.
“[Dreamsicle] deals with grief,” Morris told the Associated Press in a recent interview. “It deals with the friends that helped patch you back together. It’s important to show and to prove to myself that I can process and heal from this … If I can do it, someone will hear it and feel like they can get through that day that they’re in.”
Morris best crystallizes that understanding on the album’s exquisite title track, perhaps the prettiest, harshest song she’s ever penned: “I overthink a moment right down to the minute/Will I ever enjoy anything while I’m standin’ in it?”
Fame can pull an artist along and leave little time to comprehend what’s happening. By forcing herself to stop, take stock and give herself grace for all she’s experienced to this point, Maren Morris delivers her best album to date, and steps lightly into the next phase of her stardom, ready for what’s to come.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky (@prestonjones.bsky.social).Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
