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New Music

Maren Morris Returns With ‘Circles Around This Town’

More music is imminent from the country star
Maren Morris
Maren Morris (photo: Claire Schaper)

Way back in 2021, Maren Morris received a pretty strong billing on the 2022 version of Stagecoach. Morris is the second name in bold on Friday night (opening night), which implied (subtly) that something new was (is?) on the way.

We got our first taste of what’s to come when she shared “Circles Around This Town.” It’s her first song since her second album, 2019’s Girl, and references songs like “80s Mercedes” and “My Church.”

Here’s what she had to say about the song and elaborated on its meaning.

“I could see the visuals for ‘Circles Around This Town’ the moment I wrote the song. I’ve always been so inspired by the industrial, blown out colors of music videos from the 90s, so Harper Smith and I wanted the aesthetics of this video to reflect that grainy, devil-may-care attitude of all my females heroes from that era: Sheryl, Fiona, Alanis. Obviously, having a penchant for the nostalgic, we decided to recreate my teenage bedroom and pin old photos of me as a kid on the walls and have me typing on an old PC computer. I knew I didn’t want to take anything too seriously in this video, so all our amplified ‘signs of the universe’ are purposefully campy, but they also ask the viewer, ‘Is the universe actually showing you signs or do you just know when you need to make a real change?’ ‘Circles Around This Town’ is my story, so I felt like I truly got to relive my journey from Texas to Nashville again.”

The song was written by Morris and frequent collaborators Ryan Hurd (who is also her husband), Julia Michaels and Jimmy Robbins. “Circles Around This Town” was produced by Greg Kurstin.