Kacey Musgraves is part of a rich tapestry of women in country music who have challenged Nashville conventions by giving voice to often-taboo topics. She introduced herself to country music radio in 2012 with “Merry Go Round”, the lead single from her debut album Same Trailer Different Park. Offering up a decidedly less rose-tinted take on small-town living, the song is also the earliest example of Musgraves’ penchant for devastatingly clever wordplay.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary / We get bored so we get married / And just like dust, we settle in this town / On this broken merry-go-round.
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Same Trailer Different Park earned Musgraves a Grammy Award for Best Country Album, along with Album of the Year honors from the Academy of Country Music.
Since then, the East Texas native has continued to refuse any box that fans or the music industry have tried to place her in. She has brought tinges of ’80s disco, modern pop and the traditional Tejano music she grew up with to the genre. Through it all, however, she has lost neither her talent for wicked wordplay nor her keen observational eye.
Today, we’re celebrating the incredible life and career of Kacey Lee Musgraves, born in Sulphur Springs, Texas, on this day (August 21) in 1988.
Kacey Musgraves: From Small-Town Texas to Eight Grammys
Performing was in Kacey Musgraves’ blood long before she ever set foot on the Grand Ole Opry stage. And so was country music, a natural by-product of growing up in tiny Golden, Texas.
She felt drawn to fellow East Texan Lee Ann Womack’s angelic vocals, along with singer-songwriter John Prine’s witty wordplay.
“If I could sing it like Lee Ann would and say it like John would, then I feel like I’ve gotten somewhere,” Musgraves once said.
Mastering the guitar and mandolin at an early age, she won national championships in yodeling and performed as one-half of a country music duo called the Texas Two Bits.
Recording two independent albums at the dawn of the new millennium, Musgraves competed on the reality TV show Nashville Star in 2007. She ultimately finished in seventh place.
The Breakout Hit That Wasn’t—And the One That Was
Lyricism has always been Kacey Musgraves’ forte. She wrote her first song, “Notice Me,” at age eight in honor of her elementary-school graduation.
After high school, Musgraves moved to Nashville in 2008. She made ends meet as a demo-tape singer until landing a staff songwriting position.
In 2012, she co-wrote the fiery breakup ballad “Mama’s Broken Heart” with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.
Musgraves initially planned to record the song as her lead single, but reluctantly passed it to fellow East Texan Miranda Lambert after the Longview native “begged.”
Lambert turned the song into a platinum-selling hit, which remained a point of tension between the two for more than a decade.
Fortunately, Musgraves would make her debut that same year with “Merry Go Round”, which she wrote with McAnally and Josh Osborne.
The song established her as a singer-songwriter with a unique point of view, but its success was hard won. Musgraves was dead set on releasing “Merry Go Round” as her first single, but Mercury Nashville executives pushed back. The song was too depressing. It would send her career “down in flames” before it ever got off the ground.
Still, Musgraves stood her ground. “I’m just like okay, well, if I am going to go down in flames, I’d rather it be wholeheartedly for something I truly believe in,” she said.
A Return to Her Roots
Kacey Musgraves followed her debut album with 2015’s Pageant Material, which spawned the successful singles “Dime Store Cowgirl” and “Biscuits”.
In 2018, she took a detour into psychedelic territory with Golden Hour. Shimmering disco influences peek through on tracks like “Butterflies” and “High Horse”. It sounded almost nothing like her previous work. However, that didn’t stop it from winning four Grammy Awards—including Album of the Year.
Musgraves veered further from classic country on 2021’s Star-Crossed. Inspired by her 2020 divorce from songwriter Ruston Kelly — her primary Golden Hour muse — it nonetheless became her fourth Top 10 entry on the all-genre Billboard 200.
She dropped another top-five album with 2024’s Deeper Well, which saw her lean into folk influences on songs like the title track and “The Architect”.
Her latest offering, this year’s Middle of Nowhere, finds Musgraves right back where she started — literally.
[RELATED: Kacey Musgraves Brings the Heat in Steamy “Mexico Honey” Music Video]
She released the country album through the newly revived Lost Highway Records, which she had been the final artist to join prior to its initial closure in 2012.
Featured image by Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for Coachella
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