Maren Morris is sharing an update on her relationship with ex-husband Ryan Hurd after they reunited to record their previously unreleased 2016 song “We Can’t Be Friends.”
“What a hilarious song for us to be revisiting … ‘This is why we can’t be friends,’ and it’s, like, this hookup song,” Morris, 36, said during a recent interview on Apple Music’s “The Kelleigh Bannan Show.”
The country singer continued, “I just love the song, and I always have. It was so fun the day we wrote it with Caitlyn [Smith], and I was like, ‘I don’t want to let it go. I want to give it some love and let people hear it — like, a real version of it.'”
Morris and Hurd, 39, cowrote “We Can’t Be Friends” for her debut album, Hero, in 2016. Ten years later, the track is finally available as part of a 10th anniversary edition of the album, Hero: A Second Wind, along with Morris’ previously unheard song “Hard Liquor and Soft Rock.”
Before releasing “We Can’t Be Friends,” Morris and her ex-husband — whom she was married to from 2018 to 2024 — took to the studio to rework the track, which is about being unable to resist the magnetic pull of an ex.
“He sang backgrounds on it, and so did Caitlyn. It’s almost like we just got to time warp, and obviously so much has changed,” Morris told Bannan. “We’re coparents now, and we’re in a good place, but it is — of course, these are emotional songs still. We’re still people. It’s the music business, but these are personal things. And not just someone you’ve been married to or have a child with. It’s like, this business is personal. When you write songs, you are airing your heart out and opening up wounds and trusting people, so it feels personal.”
Morris and Hurd, who met in 2013 during a songwriting session and began dating in 2015, welcomed son Hayes in 2020. The pair maintained an amicable coparenting relationship following their divorce.
Morris said reuniting with Hurd in the studio felt “very genuine,” noting that she and her ex “still have such deep respect for one another.” They also both “love that era of songs” they wrote together, even if the songs don’t apply to their relationship now.
“Was it weird to be like, ‘That harmony sounds great on this particular line about a one night stand’? Yeah, I’m not an idiot,” the ACM Award winner admitted. “I’m definitely aware of the weirdness of the event, but I think we’ve gotten to the point now — I would hope we can laugh stuff off and not expire things that were good, like these songs. I think that we’re above that.”
Morris added that she and Hurd are “fortunate” to still have a close bond.
“We spend time together with our son. But this is the first time, I guess, we’ve worked together musically since we divorced,” she explained. “But I think it was interesting timing just because some time has passed, some peace has been found, and a friendship and co-parentership — if that’s the word — has bloomed.”
Morris concluded, “It’s nice to kind of go back to zero with the music part. That’s what drew us to each other to begin with, and so I still think the world of him and his art and his talent as a writer. It’s cool to share this. And I think people are proud of us in some way. They’re like, ‘Damn, couldn’t be me.’ But I’m proud of us.”
Hero: A Second Wind is available now.
