What’s Up With “Espresso,” a Mysterious New Song Shared by Maren Morris?

Shortly after this text was revealed, “Espresso” was faraway from Apple Music. Nevertheless, the track stays on YouTube.

Maren Morris has been one thing of a chameleon since rising in 2016 with the R&B-tinged nation of her major-label debut, Hero. The Arlington-born star veered into full-on dance-pop in 2018 with the one “The Center,” a collaboration with producer Zedd and digital music duo Gray, then introduced that sound again together with her to Nashville by inflecting her sophomore album, Woman, with a pop-country vibe in 2019. Later that yr, she went rootsy, teaming up with Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, and Amanda Shires for the Americana supergroup the Highwomen. As a lot of the world was rising from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, she filtered a powerful nation aesthetic via a nineties Lilith Truthful lens, channeling Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette on her third album, Humble Quest. With regards to self-reinvention, if she’s not fairly David Bowie, she’s confirmed tired of becoming right into a single field as an artist.

Nonetheless, when a mysterious new single popped up on-line below her identify over the weekend, it was a little bit of a shock: inexplicably titled “Espresso,” the brand new track sounds in contrast to something Morris has ever launched earlier than. Dropping into the world with out a lot as a press launch, the report artwork incorporates a girl with inexperienced hair who seems nothing like Morris, the phrase “GIRL” showing in a daring, sans serif font emblazoned over her physique. It’s filled with orchestral sounds and hovering, Florence Welch–esque vocals, with excessive drama drums and an entire friggin’ choir.

Take a pay attention beneath, after which let’s get into the questions.

Query 1: Is that this actually Maren Morris? 

To be clear: the track was posted to Maren Morris’s YouTube channel and seems on her web page on Apple Music and Tidal. (It’s not on Spotify, but it surely’s not unparalleled for official releases to seem on one streamer earlier than one other.) If it’s not Morris, any individual screwed up someplace alongside the way in which. However given how a lot of a deviation that is from Morris’s present physique of labor—even by the requirements of somebody who appears to take pleasure in reinventing herself regularly—it’s value double-checking.

We reached out to each Morris’s label and her publicist on Monday morning to substantiate Morris launched the track, however we didn’t obtain a response by publication. If this is a brand new course Morris is embarking on with the intention of constructing intrigue round a spooky sound, we wouldn’t count on one anytime quickly. Alternatively, if it was a mistake or a metadata error—say whoever was liable for inputting the artist info on the observe had an auto-complete mix-up that populated Morris’s identify on one other artist’s track—the difficulty has gone uncorrected for greater than 24 hours, which is an eternity in PR time.

Query 2: Why is the track referred to as “Espresso”? 

One of many extra ubiquitous singles of the summer season is Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso,” a pleasantly poppy bop about how the singer, like a caffeinated beverage, retains a smitten fella up all night time occupied with her. Cute! Releasing a track by the identical identify whereas that one continues to be close to the highest of the charts can be a curious alternative. However it’s even weirder, as a result of the track revealed on Morris’s channel has extra of an ethereal, Gothic really feel than a “consuming espresso and staying up late” vibe.

The “Espresso” that bears Morris’s identify ought to be referred to as one thing like “Arwen’s Lament” or “The Siege of New Phyrexia.” It ought to play over a film trailer during which a military in chain mail prices up a hill swinging swords over their heads to tackle a regiment of goblins. It sounds extra like one thing out of Recreation of Thrones than the precise track Morris recorded for the official Recreation of Thrones–impressed album.

Query 3: Simply what’s Maren Morris as much as? 

The final single Morris introduced and personally promoted was a canopy, launched in February, of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.” It’s good! She slows it down and finds a bit extra disappointment than Idol put within the unique. The observe additionally matches in with what we all know Morris does musically—it’s received a selected viewpoint however is a mainstream pop track that is sensible on first pay attention.

Morris is on tour in the meanwhile; on Saturday, in Phoenix, she celebrated Satisfaction throughout a efficiency, waving a rainbow flag round onstage earlier than sharing on Instagram, “glad to be the B in LGBTQ+” in a caption for a carousel of photographs. The singer, who additionally finalized a divorce from ex-husband Ryan Hurd earlier this yr, performed a 21-song set that included “Dancing With Myself,” a bunch of songs from her first three albums, and a brand new, still-unreleased observe referred to as “Reduce” that she debuted in San Francisco on the finish of Could. That one seems like a typical Maren Morris track. She didn’t play “Espresso.” Is it as a result of it’s not her track and any individual screwed up, after which everybody at her label fell asleep for twenty-four hours? Or is it simply because she didn’t have a full orchestra and Gothic choir to again her up and actually ship the drama of “Espresso”? We will guess which reply is appropriate, however absent affirmation from Morris’s label, we simply don’t know for certain. If Morris is the artist behind “Espresso,” all bets are off relating to her subsequent album. It could possibly be a bizarre, Tori Amos–like factor. It could possibly be operatic doom steel. It may function a duet with Travis Scott. If that is the place she’s going, something is on the desk.

Replace: Operating the art work for “Espresso” via a reverse picture search turns up a lot of different songs with totally different titles, and in numerous genres, attributed to different artists. Whereas it’s unclear what trick the creator of those tracks used to get “Espresso” positioned on Morris’s pages, or what goal any of this serves, on the very least, we really feel assured that Maren Morris has nothing to do with this. After we checked to see if “Espresso” was AI generated by importing a portion of the track via Ircam Amplify’s AI music detector, it discovered that the observe possible was created by AI, returning a ninety p.c confidence interval.