Country music star Maren Morris rang in the new year today (Jan. 8) with a new song and music video, "Circles Around This Town."
Videos by Wide Open Country
Morris wrote the song with her husband and "Chasing After You" duet partner, Ryan Hurd, plus Julia Michaels and Jimmy Robbins. Its lyrics capture the optimism and drive that's necessary for any artist in Nashville: a town where young talents face constant professional rejection before their first inkling of career success.
The video blends the lyrics' sense of defiance with a retro '70s aesthetic (and the familiar-sounding voice of Reba McEntire on Morris' TV).
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"'Circles Around This Town' is special because it's probably the most specifically autobiographical song I've ever written," Morris told New Music Daily on Apple Music 1. "All the songs that I write are about my story, but this one was very specific to my journey from Texas to Nashville nine years ago to become a songwriter, which then led in to me becoming an artist that I am today, but I wasn't sure the day that we wrote it if I was willing to get that specific in a song because at the end of the day, you want it to be your story, but you want it to apply to everyone in some way where they can hear themselves in it, but I just decided to go for it, and I felt like that was the smartest thing and the most emotional thing was just even though this song is super upbeat and jangly, it's really about keeping the gas pedal down on your dreams."
New music ups the anticipation for Morris' third major label album, a teased yet unannounced project referred to by many fans as MM3. It'll be the follow-up to 2019's Girl, which brought us back-to-back No. 1 radio hits with the title track and "The Bones."
"Circles Around This Town" Lyrics
I swear I don't know how I trusted
A Montero with the AC busted
A couple bad demos on a burned CD
Would take me all the way to Tennessee
I showed up to the new apartment
First month's, last month's, two deposits
Hadn't heard the sound of a door slam yet
Thank God I was an optimist
I drove circles around this town
Trying to write circles around this town
Trying to say something with meaning, something worth singing about
I've been kind and I've been ruthless
Yeah, I got here but the truth is
Thought when I hit it, it'd all look different
But I still got the pedal down
Driving circles around this town
So many times I thought about leaving
Got my ass kicked trying to compete with
Everybody else's ones that got away
Hung around long enough to catch a break
Couple hundred songs and the ones that finally worked
Was the one about a car and the one about a church
That I wrote
Driving circles around this town
Trying to write circles around this town
Trying to say something with meaning, something worth singing about
I've been kind and I've been ruthless
Yeah, I got here but the truth is
Thought when I hit it, it'd all look different
But I still got the pedal down
Driving circles around this town
Driving circles around this town
I drove circles around this town
Trying to write circles around this town
Trying to say something with meaning, something worth singing about
I've been kind and I've been ruthless
Yeah, I got here but the truth is
Thought when I hit it, it'd all look different
But I still got the pedal down
I still get lost, I still get found
Driving circles around this town
Oh yeah
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