Circles Around This Town by Maren Morris – Song of the Day

Our first Song of the Day for the new year is Circles Around This Town by Maren Morris, written in 2020 with her husband Ryan Hurd and fellow singer-songwriter Julia Michaels.

Morris told New Music Daily on Apple Music 1, “Circles Around This Town is special because it’s probably the most specifically autobiographical song I’ve ever written. All the songs that I write are about my story, but this one was very specific to my journey from Texas to Nashville nine years ago to become a songwriter, which then led in to me becoming an artist that I am today, but I wasn’t sure the day that we wrote it if I was willing to get that specific in a song because at the end of the day, you want it to be your story, but you want it to apply to everyone in some way where they can hear themselves in it, but I just decided to go for it, and I felt like that was the smartest thing and the most emotional thing was just even though this song is super upbeat and jangly, it’s really about keeping the gas pedal down on your dreams.”

She adds, “I hope that when listeners hear it, they can hear a bit of themselves in that story, even though it is mine. I feel like everyone’s got a daydream, everyone has a goal, and it’s really just about knowing that the target is always moving but knowing that if it’s something you really love and you want to put the time and effort into it, it doesn’t feel like a job.”

The music video recreates Morris’ teenage bedroom, including references to the 90s. It also features Reba McEntire’s voice narrating an infomercial on television in the clip’s opening.

She says, “I’ve always been so inspired by the industrial, blown out colours of music videos from the 90s, so Harper Smith and I wanted the aesthetics of this video to reflect that grainy, devil-may-care attitude of all my female heroes from that era: Sheryl, Fiona, Alanis. Obviously, having a penchant for the nostalgic, we decided to recreate my teenage bedroom and pin old photos of me as a kid on the walls and have me typing on an old PC computer. I knew I didn’t want to take anything too seriously in this video, so all our amplified ‘signs of the universe’ are purposefully campy, but they also ask the viewer, ‘Is the universe actually showing you signs, or do you just know when you need to make a real change?’”

Upon its release, Circles Around This Town broke the record for the most streams by a female artist on Amazon Music for a country song debut. The song also marks Morris’ first new music in three years – and the first single from her forthcoming third studio album.

Half way through the recording process, she noted, “My last record was very pop-leaning and with this one, I’m coming back to this Texas rootsy style that I grew up in … It’s got a lot of Americana elements, a lot of rootsy-ness. It just feels like me but a very stripped-down version of me. It’s still extremely fun and energetic so there’s a little bit [of] everything. I was saying this would be a good record to drive to, to get ready to go out for a Saturday night to, or even cook to, so it hits all of those marks.”

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For more Song Of The Days from CountryTown, check out here.
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