Maren Morris Snubs CMT Music Awards Following Dramatic Exit From Genre

On Sunday, April 7, country celebrated its biggest stars during the 2024 CMT Music Awards, but starlet Maren Morris skipped the ceremony in Austin, Texas, after her dramatic exit from the genre.

"Book tour week officially commences. Karina [Argow] and I are flying to New York tonight, so we’ll see you Wednesday at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square,” Morris, who was nominated at the CMT Music Awards, shared in an Instagram Story on Sunday, referring to her Addie Ant Goes on an Adventure children’s book.

Aside from missing the gathering to promote her book, Morris stepped away from the country industry after she had a public feud with Jason Aldean's wife, Brittany Aldean, due to an alleged transphobic comment the influencer made.

"I couldn't do this circus anymore — feeling like l have to absorb and explain people's bad behaviors and laugh it off," she admitted on a podcast. "I just couldn't do that after 2020 particularly. I've changed. A lot of things changed about me that year."

Maren also noted being part of the country music world just got too much for her.

"The stories going on within country music right now, I've tried to avoid a lot of it at all costs. I feel very, very distanced from it," she told an outlet. "I had to take a step back. The way I grew up was so wrapped in country music, and the way I write songs is very lyrically structured in the Nashville way of doing things."

"But I think I needed to purposely focus on just making good music and not so much on how we'll market it," she continued. " A lot of the drama within the community, I've chosen to step outside out of it."

OK! previously reported Cassadee Pope had a similar experience after she criticized Brittany and Morgan Wallen for their behavior.

“If this is a genre that I absolutely can’t let go of, I’m just kind of being complicit,” Pope said in a new interview about why she is returning to her rock and pop-punk past.

“I realize every genre has problematic people in it. I’m not saying there’s not a frontman in a band who hasn’t been accused of something in rock music. But I guess rock is in my bones more. You’re not completely ostracized and shamed for speaking out,” she added.

In February 2021, Wallen said the N-word in a video, but Pope refused to ignore the remark.

“I am completely disgusted by Morgan Wallens’ words. To be that flippant and nonchalant while hurling the most offensive racial slur you could utter…. some people just have ZERO sensitivity to a real f------- problem in this world: racism,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “It has no place in country music and has been tolerated and enabled way too long. And it has NO place in this world.”

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Maren spoke on The New York Times' podcast.

Maren spoke to the Los Angeles Times.