Common

Album: Girl (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • This plaintive track finds Maren Morris hooking up with Brandi Carlile for a song about the difficult situations that unite us.
  • We got way too much in common
    So what's the point in fighting?
    We got way too many problems
    If I'm being honest
    Oh, we've got way too much in common


    "Common" starts off with Morris' singing the first verse in which she talks about the polarized state of the human race. Carlile then takes over and the two ladies join their voices on the chorus afterward to croon about coming together despite past differences.
  • Morris wrote the song with her "Girl" collaborators Greg Kurstin and Sarah Aarons. The latter also co-penned Morris' pop smash with Zedd, "The Middle."
  • The duo debuted the song live during Morris' show at Brandi Carlile's Girls Just Wanna Weekend in the Riviera Maya, Mexico on February 1, 2019.
  • The collaboration came about when Morris was listening in her back porch to the tracks she'd written during her first writing session with Greg Kurstin and Sarah Aarons, including "Common." It had been a bad day but her spirits were lifted when she received a package from Carlile which contained a vinyl copy of the singer's 2018 album By the Way, I Forgive You and a note.

    "She wrote me a letter saying that she's so thankful that her daughters are going to get to grow up in a world where there's a woman like me in country music," Morris recalled to Esquire. "I was just bawling my eyes out."

    Though written as a solo track, Morris saw that "Common" had potential as a duet so she reached out to Carlile, asking if she'd be interested in a collaboration, and the Seattle singer immediately replied "yes."
  • The pair recorded their parts separately. Carlile laid down her vocals in Los Angeles with Kurstin, while Morris Facetimed in for the session.

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