HER GOLDEN HOUR: 

On Kacey Musgraves & Finding Lightness

Written by Samantha Fong

Kacey Musgraves isn’t your average Southern belle. She says what’s on her mind, consequences be damned – which is exactly the kind of fiery spirit country music needs. Born and raised in Golden, Texas, the Grammy-award-winning artist comes from humble roots, her childhood was spent frolicking about in a small town with a population of barely two hundred. Imagine a hot desert and cowboys galore. That was Kacey’s life for 24 years, and a place that continues to be a source of inspiration for the now-established country star. 

But things were not particularly easy for her in her early career. Growing up, Kacey expressed beliefs that strayed from the conservative Southern values dictating life in Texas. Singing as part of a duo called the Texas Two Bits at age 12 and regularly entering songwriting competitions with a penchant for telling it like it is, Kacey openly questioned the hypocrisy of religion and challenged the intolerance of older generations for unconventional love. But the resistance she faced only strengthened her conviction to speak her truth, and Kacey wasn’t about to let her golden hour pass. She wanted to let people know that if they felt out of place in the only world they knew, then she felt the exact same – and music was her way of communicating that solidarity. 

Despite her small-town roots, Kacey never let small-minded thinking warp her outlook on life, discussing in her earlier tracks her dissatisfaction with the misogyny that pervaded her environment and made it ten times harder for her to be heard. But Kacey could simultaneously be lighthearted, for instance lamenting about how everyone takes things too seriously in her track “High Time” where she opens with the line, “It’s high time to slow my roll”. As if it were self-talk, Kacey wrote tracks that were in conversation with each other, each new line revealing her developing thoughts about her identity as an individual taking the road less traveled. 

Just by looking at her discography, one can see how Kacey’s sound has evolved over time. For example, in her debut album Same Trailer, Different Park, Kacey tells the story of her upbringing while paying homage to her roots even when she disagrees with some of the cultural practices she witnessed growing up. To start the track “Merry Go Round”, twangy banjo chords fill the air, a dead giveaway that what we’re listening to is quintessentially country. But then the banjo fades and Kacey sings with an unmistakable irony: Mary, Mary quite contrary/We get bored so we get married/Just like dust, we settle in this town/On this broken merry-go-round. Surprise! She’s not counting her lucky stars. She’s wishing she could get away from them, an anthem that so brutally speaks to the disillusionment we can often feel when something – or someone – is holding us back. For Kacey, Golden, Texas, was beautiful in its own right, yet every beauty has some darkness and she’s not afraid to show us both ends. 

Progressing onto her sophomore album Pageant Material, the sentiment is the same, as Kacey sings of defying norms and letting your cards show. In her lyrics, she laments over all the ways that others behave like hypocrites and how she hates that she’s the same. But in the end, as the album’s title suggests, everyone is messy because people can be multiple things at once and that’s often what traditionalists are afraid of. Even Kacey struggles with identity, as she now borders the line between country and pop, with her latest album being classified by the Academy as pop despite her insistence that she designed it to be country. However, what  Kacey’s realizing is that out of all the sacrifices she’s made to be a singer, sacrificing her identity isn’t something she’s willing to concede on and nor as her fans should we consider it either. In short, there are times when your art is worth fighting for. 

For her more recent albums, Kacey pulls from a different well of inspiration. First, for Golden Hour she infuses pop with country, in a Taylor Swift Red kind of way. Sugary sweet lyrics are backed by striking guitar riffs like in “Wonder Woman” and “High Horse”. Then a softer, self-aware side emerges in “Golden Hour” and “Slow Burn”, classic everything’s-gonna-be-alright-because-i’m-with-you anthems which make you feel like you’re floating down the edge of the coast, worries aside. In this tracklist, Kacey turns her lens from her environment inwards, telling the audience for the first time about her personal experiences with love and loss. Here, Kacey opens up to us and to herself to have those difficult conversations that sit in the darkness until we bring them to light. Like shifting seasons, Kacey is shifting gears. Yet from the trailer park to the concert stage, her goal remains the same: to tell stories untold and to grow while doing it. 

If Same Trailer, Different Park was Kacey finding her voice and Pageant Material was her exercising it, then Golden Hour is the culmination of the person she’s grown to become: an artist who, like the best of us, believes that anything is within reach if we are brave enough to reach for it. As for the future, Kacey is currently working on her fifth studio album with Interscope Records, and we’re just praying she drops it soon.