Singer-songwriter Maren Morris is a fast-rising star on the country music charts, but it took giving up singing for her to find her true voice, she tells Anthony Mason in an interview for CBS SUNDAY MORNING to be broadcast July 3 on the CBS Broadcast Network.

Four years ago, after performing on the Texas music circuit since she was a teenager, Morris packed up and moved to Nashville to become a songwriter.

“I think I was a little fed up with myself,” Morris, 26, tells Mason. “And I wanted to make a change. I had never lived anywhere else besides Texas. And I just wanted to be a better something.”

Was she trying to provoke something in herself?

“Yeah, I was trying to scare myself a little bit,” Morris says.

It worked. In Nashville, Morris landed a job at a publisher, and within six months Tim McGraw recorded a song she co-wrote, “Last Turn Home.”

“It was very emotional,” Morris tells Mason of hearing that McGraw recorded her song. “As a songwriter, you never forget that first cut.”

Eventually, Morris began finding her voice as a performer, the one she left Texas to find. In the past year, the single “My Church,” co-written with Mike Busbee, became her first gold record, and her latest, “80’s Mercedes,” is climbing the charts.

Morris also talks with Mason about writing songs, her life in Texas, her move to Nashville and the release of her first major label debut album.

“It’s crazy to think what’s happened in a very short amount of time, even though it feels like forever,” Morris tells Mason.

CBS SUNDAY MORNING is broadcast Sundays (9:00-10:30 AM, ET) on the CBS Television Network. Rand Morrison is the executive producer.

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