that she is “getting the hell out” and “leaving” country music. Her explanation, essentially, is that she is fed up with the country industry’s institutional racism, gender discrimination and tolerance for anti-LGBTQ+ voices, along with the blowback she has received for speaking out against these problems. It’s an eye-catching renouncement given Morris’ status, but there’s also a subtlety that may be getting lost.
In the practical world, a music genre is a complex category defined not by any one set of gatekeepers in the music industry nor by any particular list of awards shows and marketing venues. Rather, genres are created by the ever-evolving, nuanced interplay of how fans think about their music and themselves, how musicians enmesh particular sounds and styles into their sound, and how the industry attempts to differentiate what is, in reality, a messy, interconnected sonic world.