Maren Morris sounds perfectly fine on her own on a cover of Billy Idol’s 1982 classic “Dancing With Myself.” The countrified, sultry take on the new wave rocker’s ode going it alone dropped on Thursday (Feb. 15), along with an appropriately one-woman music video shot inside Nashville’s iconic Grimey’s record store.
As you might expect, Morris layers the original snarling rock tune with banjos, strummed acoustic guitars and her signature smoky vocals on the track produced by Gabe Simon (Noah Kahan, Lana Del Rey). In the visual, Morris dances her way through the aisles of the empty independent record store, pulling out pieces of vinyl and hoisting them over her head in between trips to a makeshift stage where she croons the song’s onanistic refrain into into a mic for an audience of none.
Morris, who finalized her divorce from husband Ryan Hurd earlier this month, told Yahoo! Entertainment that the song is a celebration of her single life. “I’m in this new slate in life and I want to sort of lean into the vulnerability of the lyrics, because when I was [writing] them down, I don’t know, it kind of struck this melancholic note and I feel like that’s such a relatable theme to singleness,” she said. [Being single] is fun and you’re really getting to know yourself, which is important because you are the longest relationship you’ll have in your life so you need to tend to that one. But there’s also, you know, moments of bittersweetness when you feel on those occasional nights a little lonely.”
The singer said filming in Grimey’s was especially sweet because it’s located in East Nashville, which is where she lived when she first moved to town. “I just put my entire heart into not giving a s–t and dancing and looking stupid,” she said. “I felt really emotionally connected to the song. … I just was like, I am dancing with myself.”
After announcing last year that she was planning to “step back” from making country music — which she told the outlet was misinterpreted at the time — Morris said she’s in the “early creative stages” of writing her next album after going back to the drawing board on the project she was working on before the divorce. As for whether the album will be more pop than country, Morris said it’s “too early to tell.”
“Dancing” is Morris’ first new music since she dropped her two-song 2023 EP The Bridge. The singer will receive the Visionary Award for her commitment to speaking out about injustice at this year’s Billboard Women in Music Awards on March 6, where she will also perform.
Watch Morris’ video for “Dancing With Myself” below.