Maren Morris’ ‘Better Than We Found It’ Pleads for Action [Listen]
Maren Morris' new song "Better Than We Found It" calls for action: to take responsibility for affecting change in the world and leaving it better than it was when we arrived in it. The singer dropped the track on Friday (Oct. 2).
Morris calls "Better Than We Found It" a protest song, and says it "address[es] exactly how I feel right now." She co-wrote the track with Jessie Jo Dillon, Jimmy Robbins and Laura Veltz, and Greg Kurstin produced it.
"It’s the most American thing to protest, and protest songs have been so embedded in American culture," Morris reflects. "I think the world right now is sort of in a perpetual mourning period, and I wanted to have a song that had weight but also had hope."
"When time turns this moment to dust, I just hope that I'm proud of the woman I was / When lines of tomorrow are drawn / Can I live with the side that I chose to be on?" Morris sings in the chorus, changing "that I'm proud" to "my son's proud" in the final run-through. "Will we sit on our hands, do nothin' about it? / Or will we leave this world better than we found it?"
Morris' new motherhood -- her first son with husband and fellow artist Ryan Hurd, Hayes, was born in March -- is a throughline in "Better Than We Found It." In a bridge, she sings, "America, America, divided we fall / America, America, God save us all from ourselves and the hell that we built for our kids / America, America, we're better than this."
"I still have hope for this country and for the future of it," Morris adds, "and as a new mother, I wanted to promise my son that I’m going to do everything in my power to leave this world better than the one I came into and the one I see right now."
Some of the proceeds from "Better Than We Found It" will be donated to the Black Women's Health Imperative, a nonprofit organization "created by Black women to help protect and advance the health and wellness of Black women and girls," according to its website.
The 2020 ACM Awards Female Vocalist of the Year, Morris is one of the genre's more outspoken artists, using her social media platforms to advocate for causes in which she believes. In a recent CBS This Morning feature, she shared that she and Hurd have placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their Music City home.
"It's not political, it's not partisan, to be like, 'These people need justice; there needs to be reform.' It's a human issue," Morris says. "People need to know what side you're on, and I want to be on the right side of history."