Maren Morris says she and her family received death threats after she publicly denounced Morgan Wallen after he was caught on camera drunkenly using the n-word in 2021.
Appearing on Sophia Bush's Work in Progress podcast, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter revealed how she was subjected to a lot of abuse, hate speech and even threats, not only towards her but also her young son, following comments she made about Wallen.
"I mean, the death threat portion for me as a young mother was, yeah, obviously, like, scary," Morris told Bush. "And it wasn't death threats against me. It was against my son, too. So it's like, 'Oh, wow. Now we're involving the kids, the ones that you cared so much about.'"
Back in February 2021, following TMZ leaking the footage of Wallen using the racial slur, Morris was among a handful of country music acts, including Mickey Guyton, to publicly call him out fo his wrongdoing.
In a response to Kelsea Ballerini stating that "the news out of Nashville tonight does not represent country music," Morris tweeted, "It actually IS representative of our town because this isn’t his first “scuffle” and he just demolished a huge streaming record last month regardless. We all know it wasn’t his first time using that word. We keep them rich and protected at all costs with no recourse."
Morris claims that as a fellow country singer at the time, she was showing her disappointment in Wallen's actions and encouraging the industry to "do better" than just ignoring the problem.
"I think it's because they're not only, like, defending the person that said this, but they are taking it personally as if I'm criticizing them, which I think says, you know, a lot more about their interpretation of criticism and what that content was than me as a person calling out someone using the N-word," she explained. "Or even transphobia that I've criticized in the past that sort of, like, exploded in another wave."
Maren Morris has repeatedly criticized the country music industry for its inability to hold artists accountable. Last year she got into a public spat with Jason Aldran regarding his hit, “Try That in a Small Town," which was accused of bad politicized takes and toxic masculinity.
At the time she admitted she was pursuing a new direction outside of country music, saying, "I think I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we’ll market it. The last few records, that’s always been in the back of my mind: Will this work in the country music universe?"
Hear the episode of Work In Progress below.