Maren Morris only has one special vocal guest on her latest album, Humble Quest, but it’s an important one. Her young son, Hayes, lends his voice to “Hummingbird,” a track that Maren wrote the day she found out she was pregnant.
“He’s like the only little feature on it,” the singer tells ABC Audio. “But yeah, his sweet little voice is eternally marked in this song.”
Hayes was born in March 2020, and since then, he’s given Maren a new perspective on everything. That includes songwriting and touring to her TV guest spots, like an appearance she made on Sesame Street in February 2020, just before he was born, when she sang a song called “Oops! Whoops! Wait, ah Hah!”
“I actually, a couple weeks ago, showed Hayes my episode of Sesame Street that I did,” Maren says, who notes one of Hayes’ favorite Muppet characters, Elmo, sang backup with her.
“He loves Elmo,” says Maren. “But seeing me in the television was very bizarre to him. I don’t think he understood what was going on — like, ‘Oh, you’re here and you’re there.’”
Now that Hayes is getting a little older, though, she hopes that she’ll have more opportunities to do guest spots that have some crossover with his interests. “I hope I can do Sesame Street again and bring Hayes, because he will lose his mind,” Maren says.
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