MAREN MORRIS LIVE: REVIEW
- Bernard Zuel
- 8 hours ago
- 3 min read
MAREN MORRIS
Enmore Theatre, February 7
DONNA SUMMER’S Love To Love You Baby as the play-on music for a multiple Country Music Association-winner with three number one singles on the country chart? Why the hell not. Not least because apart from Arlington-raised Maren Morris’s all-glitter-all-shimmer-disco-in-Enmore dress fitting the bill, that Giorgio Moroder classic has a close (kissing?) cousin in the slap bass of the show’s opening number, Cry In The Car.
Hey Billy Gibbons, Texas boogie (fever?) means something else now.
It does loop back though. There is a recurring argument had at the border between pop country, country pop, rock country and country R&B, where the degree of difference may be imperceptible to outsiders at first, but fans debate furiously. As fans are wont to do in any genre.
Nashville-based Morris is not the first or last to be here, nor is she really new to it, having incorporated R&B, America’s dominant music form for the past two decades from her first recordings in 2016, as we can still hear in that unholy roller of a stomper, My Church. But she is a good example of it when you consider that on this tour, her first here in nearly a decade and first as a headliner, there are some watching – and maybe some choosing not to watch – this tour who miss what they say was the more overtly country feel she began with.
This segment of the fan-base find the 22-song set dominated by the most recent album, Dreamsicle, more glossy pop than they want, and maybe some of them found the over-loud and undifferentiated sound at the beginning of the night emblematic of force over finesse. That’s an argument familiar to anyone who was around in the bridging years when Taylor Swift transitioned from country music’s most likely to the biggest pop star in the world, with fans still enthusiastic but a portion pining for the days of more lace and denim than cut-high bodysuit.
It’s possible someone was grumbling in the room during Push Me Over, which is as straightforward a song looking for a two-tier stage and dancers as you might hope for at a Phink or Robbie Williams extravaganza, especially when that segued into Torn (yes, the Natalie Imbruglia hit), for a moment leaving no room for doubt about the pop intentions. But, as Morris sang on this night, People Still Show Up.
And while they waited for a heavy-footed older song like Rich, they could punch the air with Cut or throw back their heads and exalt in the soaring contradictory tone in the chorus of I Hope I Never Fall In Love. Or they could pair the dance-around-the-bedroom zest of Holy Smoke with the sisters-united energy of The Middle. Old school style.
Honestly though, the differences are in shading more than sharp differences really, as she offered up Too Good, which from its opening harmonies and slower rhythm to its 1950’s-callback of a chorus, was all about its roots. Or when she gave us a song like Bed No Breakfast about adult boundaries in modern dating (to wit, you can stay til we’re done, then you’re going home) which has the frank opinions and firm attitude of the Tammy/Loretta days – “excuse my directness, this a bed, no breakfast” – with just more blunt language.
If quieter moments such as the delicate but not recessive ballad, Grand Bouquet, were rare, towards the end of the set with This Is How A Woman Leaves – not that far at all from some of the searing parts of Amanda Shires’ superb 2025 breakup album – Morris drove home how those off-speed songs cross whatever boundaries we might erect on dirt floor or dancefloor.
Ask Donna as much as Dolly.
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