Ravinia 2025 Issue 6

MAREN MORRIS IS ONE COOL CAT. Beyond making no bones about social issues like LGBTQ+ and women’s rights (coming out as bisexual herself), she’s openly questioned an entire category of the music industry—the same one that set her star on the rise. She forges her own course musically and personally, and she encourages women to follow suit and explore their own passions and paths through her self-assured music and hard- fought, hard-sought life examples. Morris has been at the forefront of current crowd of concert-headlining, chart-topping, award-winning female artists for almost a decade, writing, sing- ing, and performing rousing, hook-heavy songs that have become rallying, sing- along anthems for the cause, including, of course, “Girl,” as well as “My Church,” “The Bones,” “The Tree,” “I Could Use a Love Song,” “80s Mercedes,” and others. Armed with new songs, a new life, and a new purpose as she supports her latest and liberating album, Dreamsicle , Morris is bringing her confident and inspiring “female forward” pitches to the Ravinia Festival’s Pavilion on August 22. Morris is evidently drawn to the Chicago area—her 2020 four-song EP was recorded at the Riviera Theatre ( Maren Morris Live in Chicago ), and she made a surprise and memorable appearance at Soldier Field in June 2023 with Taylor Swift to perform their duet “You All Over Me” during Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour. Despite all this activity, admittedly, this writer discovered Maren Morris late in the game. My country music tastes have long favored the outlaw sounds of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings as well as the vintage, twangy, pristine Nashville notes of producer Billy Sher- rill, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, and Glen Campbell. But one appreciates how the con- temporary crop of country crooners has elevated the genre by nodding to the past but imprinting themselves onto the future. For more than three decades, art- ists like Garth Brooks, Swift, Carrie Un- derwood, Tim McGraw, Chris Stapleton, Shania Twain, Miranda Lambert, Luke Bryan, and Jelly Roll, have seamlessly blended rock, pop, and hip-hop sounds into the country formula to transform it from a regional favorite into a musical maelstrom. Morris is among today’s most pio- neering, galvanizing female singer-song- writers who have rooted their music deep in country soil and enthusiastically embraced the larger pop world with songs spiced with a personal, intimate flavor of relationships, life struggles, and experiences that relate to a generation that thrives on social sharing. Although Morris has been a big player on the big stage since 2016, it was two years later, at the taping of a star-studded Grammy Awards TV tribute special to Elton John in The Theater at Madison Square Garden, when my radar finally registered. As star after star—including Lady Gaga, Chris Martin, and Miley Cyrus—took the stage, Maren Morris regally appeared in a large, circular-backed ’70s wicker chair at the end of a long, elaborately set dining table. Amidst this stately setting, rather than offering one of John’s major hits she chose a lesser-known Elton John–Bernie Taupin deep cut, “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” from 1972’s Honky Chateau album. Her song choice shocked and delighted diehard fans from the recognizable first note and lyric. She gave Taupin’s poetic, reflective meditation on the excesses and seedy sides of ’70s New York nightlife a subtle country tinge while staying true to John’s original vocal phrasing and intri- cate melody. Morris’s strong, emotive, bittersweet vocal held the audience— and me—in quiet captivation. Her studio version of “Mona Lisas” appeared on the tribute album Resto- ration: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin , on which Taupin handpicked the contributing artists to sing a collection of several country-in- spired compositions by the lauded song- writing team. Not surprisingly, Morris’s “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” earned her a Grammy nomination. The 35-year-old Morris was born in Arlington, TX, and from a young age began performing in public throughout the state. Beginning in her mid-teens, in 2005, she released her first of three independent albums. Later, she moved to the country music mecca, Nashville, to pursue a songwriting career. In 2015, on the strength and streaming success of her self-titled EP, she signed a publish- ing and recording contract. RAVINIAMAGAZINE • AUG. 18 – AUG. 31, 2025 6