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Maren Morris can’t fathom writing an album of breakup songs.

“There’s artists that do that so well, their brand is being morose. That’s cool, I f—ing love it,” she tells GRAMMY.com. “But I can’t emotionally handle that every night on stage. Yes, I’ll tackle some hard s— in the show and on a record, but I want to be performing this in a way that’s healthy for me every night.”

It was easy to assume that the GRAMMY-winning country star would take the sad song route on her fourth album, D R E A M S I C L E, which arrived May 9. Morris filed for divorce from fellow country singer/songwriter Ryan Hurd in October 2023, ending an eight-year relationship that coincided with her rise to stardom. But the resulting project hardly dwells on a breakup; instead, it sees Morris finding the beauty in life’s unexpected changes.

“I turn rain into rainbows/ Turn pain into potential” are the first words she delivers on opener “lemonade,” a thumping anthem that sets the tone for the set’s 14 tracks. Even the album’s most tender track, “this is how a woman leaves,” is similarly imbued with a sense of empowerment and release that indicates Morris is on the other side of heartbreak.

The hopeful tone of D R E A M S I C L E is also the result of Morris coming into her own. Along with enduring a public divorce, she came out as bisexual in June 2024. All the while, she was facing the aftermath of a 2023 interview misconstruing her comments about leaving country music. D R E A M S I C L E addresses all of that — whether lyrically on songs like “push me over” and “i hope i never fall in love,” or musically with ’80s-inspired synths on “crying in the car” and grungy guitars on “people still show up.”

No matter how different Morris may feel or be perceived, D R E A M S I C L E is reminiscent of the strong-willed, boundary-pushing girl from her 2016 debut, HERO. This time around, rather than introducing her narrative, she’s reclaiming it.

“This album is really courageous, and even if you didn’t know about my divorce, or my relationship with the mainstream industry of country music, I think that you’ll listen to this album and be like, Holy s—, you can tell this person’s been through a lot, but they’re making me laugh, and they’re making me cry, and dance,” she says. “It’s just so many layers of every emotion.” 

Below, in her own words, Morris details the life lessons that inspired D R E A M S I C L E — and helped her become “the most secure version of myself.”

The following has been edited for clarity and brevity.

It was intentional to be like, I want to give myself the time to write a record that is not just steeped in this immediate loss aftermath. I want to give myself the time to grow and have fun again, laugh again, be a bit of a mess. I want to give myself the time to experience that and then write it.

By the end [of the album process], I was like, Thank God this isn’t a breakup record. I just didn’t feel like putting that out. I didn’t feel that way by the end, that I was just a girl going through a divorce or a breakup. I became so many new things in the healing period. 

This record is more about the aftermath of what happens after a huge, tectonic shift in your emotional life and your personal life, and that felt a lot more interesting to me than it just being a record about a breakup. It was like, How do you pull yourself out of the pits of hell? And yes, you have to do it by yourself in some ways… And with the help of my friends and family and co-writers, I was starting to see a very lean version of my heart, and there was just no filler. 

The writing is reflecting that. It’s not avoiding the topic of loss or grief in the relationship space, but it’s just not dwelling on it too long. It’s like, Yes, that s— happened, and it was hard. But also, here’s what happened next.

Kicking [the album] off with something that wasn’t too intimate or self reflective — [“lemonade”] is, but it’s in a really bombastic way — I wanted the listener to start with that song [and] be like, Whoa… I thought this was going to be a bunch of self-reflective love and loss songs. I think there’s room for that, and I have those in me, and I’ve put them in this album, but I do think starting [with “lemonade”] was my way of saying, You thought you knew what this was going to sound like, didn’t you?

It’s definitely a shift of focus, because so much of my life living in Nashville has been in that relationship. Also, we were collaborators on all of my records past. You know, when you’re married to another songwriter, you go home and you play them the demo of what you did that day. So it wasn’t just losing a partner in a family sense, but also, a creative partner.

After everything ended and I was on this other side of the healing path, I had to really ask myself, Do I think what I do is good? And my answers were, Yes, I do believe in myself, and I always have. But your ego takes a hit — everything takes a hit when you go through something as colossal as divorce, and of course, your music is going to be a mirror of whatever you’re going through at the time. 

Without slinging arrows at another person — even if I’m allowing myself to be upset or angry — I have to be able to heal in the only way that I know how, or at least the main way I know how, which is writing about it. I have other portals of catharsis at this point, but I just had to really say, I can do all of this without any outside opinion. 

That was a really empowering moment for me. And even though this album has songs on it that were written during my relationship and the aftermath, the fairest depiction of what happened was to give the full scope of those three years… and just stand by your work.

Cathartic is always the word I’ve used with “cut!” [and “crying in the car”]. I think [they’re about] the beauty of the breakdown and just knowing that we should be allowed to express our anger, and grief, and happy, manic tears all in one go. I guess that’s just a place I easily go to. I know how to blow a gasket in the privacy of my own home or car, and I’ll move on, and then on to the next one. Like, business b— [Laughs.] I think that was the mentality of those songs. 

But with songs like “grand bouquet,” Jack Antonoff [was] like, “I don’t want you to over sing this vocal, almost whisper it” when I was doing the booth takes. That was really helpful for me, because I was learning about my voice in a way that I hadn’t used quite to that extent — like, the least extent. 

It’s really hard to be vulnerable, even as a vocalist, and not having to prove yourself through volume or runs. Allowing it to be almost whispered is quite haunting. I think that’s what makes the lyrics, but also the vocal performance of “grand bouquet” extremely vulnerable. You don’t have to add a lot of flash or shine to it. 

When I speak about this album not shying away from grief, those are the moments. You can have a good cry to several songs on this record, but a few of them you can dance while crying.

Obviously I’ve been open about my divorce and how it shifted a lot of the themes of this record on an emotional level, but also on a musical level.

I was in such a fragile state that I was in a place of [wanting] to write with people that I trust, and know me, and I’m comfortable with, and I did that — I worked with Julia Michaels, Laura Veltz, Jimmy Robbins. But then I also kind of was in this space of wanting to scare myself and get into rooms with strangers and whose music I love. I think that really helped me wake up out of my grief, and start becoming more risky with things I was saying, lyrically or [with] vocal arrangements. 

This is the most producers I’ve had on a record. I started writing this in early 2023 when I was still married, and still kind of in this country space only. And then a lot of shifts happened. New producers were getting new emotions out of me. 

I’m so excited that I got to work with the people I worked with on this project, and also have all of it represented in one cohesive album. I’m coming from the world of you have one producer, maybe two, so I think I just had to give myself the permission of, like, It’s going to be fine. People are going to listen to this and know this is a Maren record, no matter what.

When you listen to the record top to bottom, it’s sonically ambitious, but also familiar of what my prior work has sounded like, just taking a step further — or many steps further. I truly laid myself bare in a way that I didn’t know was achievable. I can say that proudly.

I probably had a different prompt for every single session happening over three years. Some days I’d be like, I want to write something soulful and rootsy, like Americana, and the next day is like, Give me all the synthesizers in the studio. I think it depended on the studio and the collaborators that day.

I always want to come into the session with an idea, whether it’s a musical idea, or something that I was listening to that I’m inspired by, or a title or a concept lyrically. I feel like all my records have that theme, but this one is certainly me stretching beyond balance I didn’t know I could. It’s an exciting place to be in, and it feels liberating to be in that space creatively. 

I’ve always been able to explore genre. Back when I released “My Church,” our follow-up single was “80s Mercedes” — those songs could not have been more opposite, but they were written by the same two people, produced by busbee. Out the gate I wanted to demonstrate to whoever was listening that I don’t just do this one thing, but my vocal is the anchor for all of it.

It was so freeing to write and release [“push me over”]. Everything I’ve been through the last few years, and every move forward, has felt rebellious, in a way of, like, This is scary. This is s— that I don’t think I would have had the courage to do three years ago. It almost feels like I’m jumping out of the airplane and hope the parachute deploys.

It feels really nice to be in this place of self-love and acceptance and knowing that I don’t feel shame or have to hide anything, or dim any part of myself anymore. And I think that my music is reflective of that. 

When I listen to “lemonade,” and that being the first song on this album, and then I go back to HERO, and that album started with “Sugar.” There was some weird paralleling going on. Back then, I was so confident, almost arrogant, because there was no bar set or person to please except for myself. And I think in some ways, it took me 10 years to find the more wise version of that confidence — and it being true confidence out of strife and trauma and being a mother, and all the things that the me during the HERO phase hadn’t experienced yet. But that kind of freedom has been revisited and rekindled.

With both [2019’s] GIRL and Humble Quest, I was just riddled with anxiety — and not in my talent or myself, but how it would be perceived, and not letting anyone down. And I feel like, with D R E A M S I C L E, it’s like, I can’t keep doing this to my mental health. I just have to remember why I love doing this and not have it be attached to an industry, a partner, a producer. 

I was getting somewhere with Humble Quest, but I was still in that deep discomfort of searching through the dark. And now, because of a lot of life changes, with [D R E A M S I C L E], it’s like, Okay, you’re out of the woods and the hard lessons are behind you. Or at least, that’s what my astrologist has told me. We’ll see.

There’s a moment in the second verse in “dreamsicle,” I’m like, “Will I ever enjoy anything while I’m standing in it?”

Naming the album that was about the practice of being present and enjoying your successes as they’re coming… And now I really have to be [present] because I have my 5-year-old, and he teaches me every day to snap out of it and be there for him. And that’s been amazing for me, because it takes me out of myself. But yeah, everything that I’ve done has really been for my own joy and happiness and well-being. And if this is a happy person, I will be a better mother. And music just happens to be the conduit for me to do these things. 

I’m the most secure version of myself. You know, I’m 35, and there’s just a beauty of your 30s, which is just like, you stop giving a s— about people’s opinions. You care way more about your own, and that’s so coveted and so fortunate to get to a place like that. I wouldn’t rewind and do things over, because something led here for a meaning or a reason.

Even if it’s [something] mediocre, I’ll feel it all. I’ve survived a lot more than I thought I could. So I’m glad that this album sort of documented the healing period and the grief period. I’m excited to get back in the writing room and just keep going. I want to keep the faucet running.