Lee Greenwood Says Maren Morris Doesn’t Understand Country Music

Lee Greenwood, American patriot and writer of “God Bless The USA,” recently penned an open letter to Fox News that addressed Maren Morris’s recent departure from country music.

In the letter posted to Fox News on Sunday (October 15), 80-year-old Greenwood called out Maren Morris for misunderstanding the culture of country music and “blasting” the genre on her way out.

“The millennial star claims that country music is having an ‘existential crisis’ by tying itself so closely to patriotism, America and freedom. However, that’s precisely what country music is all about!” Greenwood wrote.

The country legend added that those who believe that country music is too patriotic don’t understand what it is about.

“…Country music is so closely tied to the heartbeat of America, it also happens to reflect what’s happening across the country at the very moment. As a result, it’s not that politics has infiltrated country music, it’s quite the opposite – music ends up reflecting the very conversations happening across the country today.”

He wrote that songs like Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town” accurately reflect “the change in the American landscape, law enforcement, the defunding of police, and the mass looting that soon followed and has become commonplace in towns across America today.”

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He continued to defend country music as representing what is happening in America at any given time, as evidenced in the way the genre has changed over the years. He referenced his own “God Bless The USA” that was inspired by what he saw his grandparents endure during the farm crisis that followed President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 embargo against the Soviet Union.

“Farmers such as my grandparents went from supplying food to the world, to barely having enough on their own plate to survive,” Greenwood shared.

Lee called out liberal country artists who despise the genre and place blame for the state of our country on any particular political group. He added that politics haven’t made their way into country music, but country music simply reflects what is happening in our country.

“Political trends will change with the winds, but the core of country music remains: love of country, love of freedom, love of America. There’s nothing wrong with that, and that’s not going to change any time soon,” Greenwood said.

He then issued a challenge for Maren Morris to stay in country music where she can have her say and represent the very ideals that she says the genre lacks. Greenwood concluded the letter by saying, “suggesting that individual country music artists (or the entire genre of country music!) ought to be ‘canceled’ because you don’t like the lyrics is a slippery slope to censorship, free expression, and is out of line with the values of hard work, freedom, and grit that have made country music so great to this day.”

In mid-September, Maren Morris announced that she was stepping away from country music after feeling “very distanced” from the industry and what she feels the genre represents.

The news came in an interview the 33-year-old did with the LA Times where she stated that she wanted to “burn it down and start over,” but realized that country music was destroying itself and didn’t need her help.

Morris, an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and the Black Lives Matter movement, said that her political stance made her unpopular in the country music community.

“I’ve always been an asker of questions and a status quo challenger just by being a woman. So it wasn’t really even a choice,” Morris said. “The further you get into the country music business, that’s when you start to see the cracks. And once you see it, you can’t un-see it.”

She added that she has chosen to focus on her music and distance herself from the “drama within the community. In the interview she also called out some of this year’s biggest songs like Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town,” saying that the song wasn’t being downloaded out of love for the music, but out of spite. “It’s to own the libs,” she said.

Read Lee Greenwood’s full letter to Maren Morris HERE.