ABC/Mark LevineBarely a day after Maren Morris released “Dear Hate” in response to the mass shootings in Las Vegas on Sunday, the new track was sitting at #1 on the iTunes Top Songs chart.
“Dear Hate” even outsold multiple cuts by rocker Tom Petty, who died suddenly on Monday — including classics like “Free Fallin’,” “I Won’t Back Down,” and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance.”
It also bested Taylor Swift’s latest smash, “Look What You Made Me Do,” but that’s likely O.K. with Taylor, since she included songs by both Maren and her fiancé Ryan Hurd on a recent “Songs Taylor Loves” Spotify playlist.
Maren wrote “Dear Hate” in 2015, shortly after the church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina and recorded it last year with Country Music Hall-of-Famer Vince Gill, but had never released it.
“I wanted to be precious with it because it is such a sensitive subject,” she told Rolling Stone. “It’s just insane how relevant the message still is today.”
The Texas native performed at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on Saturday night, a day before gunman Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured more than 500 by firing into the crowd of 22,000 at the event.
Maren is donating all the proceeds from the song to the Music City Cares Fund to help victims of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
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