Maren Morris has revealed why she stepped away from country music - insisting she "couldn't do the circus anymore".
The 33-year-old singer admitted "a lot of things" about her "changed" after 2020, but she still loves Nashville despite distancing herself from the genre.
She told The New York Times' 'Popcast' podcast: "I love living in Nashville, I have my family. There’s a reason why people come there from L.A. and New York to write with us. It’s because we have amazing songwriters there. That’s not gonna change.
"I couldn’t do this circus anymore - feeling like l have to absorb and explain people’s bad behaviours and laugh it off.
"I just couldn’t do that after 2020 particularly. I’ve changed. A lot of things changed about me that year."
Maren insisted she wasn't "leaving country music" entirely, but admitted she "certainly can’t participate in a lot of it", and she is now doing her "own thing".
Last month, Maren revealed she was switching record labels from Columbia Nashville to Columbia Records because she began to feel "very, very distanced" from the industry and its politics.
She told the Los Angeles Times newspaper of country music: "I thought I’d like to burn it to the ground and start over. But it’s burning itself down without my help."
The 'Get the Hell Out Of Here' singer has been a vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and the Black Lives Matter movement, and she admitted pushing for change only led to her feeling isolated.
She said: "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.
"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...
"If you truly love this type of music and you start to see problems arise, it needs to be criticized. Anything this popular should be scrutinised if we want to see progress.
"But I’ve kind of said everything I can say. I always thought I’d have to do middle fingers in the air jumping out of an airplane, but I’m trying to mature here and realize I can just walk away from the parts of this that no longer make me happy."
