Maren Morris released a new protest song, “Better Than We Found It,” on Oct. 2, as well as an accompanying video.
Penned by Maren, Jessie Jo Dillon, Jimmy Robbins and Laura Veltz and produced by Greg Kurstin, “Better Than We Found It” finds Maren singing the chorus: “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 I chose to be on / Will we sit on our hands doing nothing about it / Or will we leave this world / Better than we found it.”
“I wanted to write something to address exactly how I feel right now, and this came together pretty quickly,” says Maren. “It’s a protest song—it’s the most American thing to protest and protest songs have been so embedded in American culture: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone. 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. I still have hope for this country and for the future of it, 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.”
The video features members of Maren’s Nashville community, including: a young man impacted by the politicization of immigration; the family of Daniel Hambrick, who was killed by Nashville police in 2018; and young organizers of a protest supporting Black Lives Matter. The video ends with a letter Maren wrote to her infant son, Hayes.
A portion of the song’s proceeds 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.
Watch Maren’s new video below.
