Great Billboard article on Grammy Award winner Maren Morris from Tom Roland:
“Country music is my religion in a way,” she says. “That’s what I grew up listening to. When you think about Johnny Cash’s ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ and Hank Williams — where do I even begin with his catalog? — it’s church to me. And I know it is for a lot of other people, too.”
She had neither a melody nor any lines to support the title, but she had the faith. And busbee was an instant believer. He suggested a couple lines — “Can I get a hallelujah/Can I get an amen” — that they originally thought they would save for an a cappella bridge.
“But as we were writing the verse and he was building the track,” she says, “I sort of looked at it and I was like, ‘Man, that is really catchy, and I want to hear it more than once. Maybe this is the chorus.’ And so we tried it, and it ended up working out.”
And it worked out fast. The song itself was finished in about an hour, almost as if it was given to them.
“There’s a lot of ways to think about writing, and I do think the opportunity to be creative is a reflection on the Creator,” says busbee. “I don’t really know if it works where the Creator goes, ‘I want this song out there,’ and sends it to you or not. I have no idea how it works, but there are times where you feel like something is coming through you.”
Read entire article HERE