Kacey Musgraves

Multiple Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves has recently released her fourth studio album, Golden Hour (MCA Nashville), which has earned Kacey her third No. 1 debut on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. The album has been met with critical raves across the board including NPR, TIME, Rolling Stone, The FADER, Consequence of Sound, Noisey and Paste, among others. NPR has declared “she’s relaxed into the sound she’d already designed, going deeper beneath its sparkly, vintage-tinted surface and further cultivating her innate commitment to clarity and craft” and Noisey has proclaimed “it’s clear that the Texan is still the most talented songwriter in mainstream pop-country.” “Space Cowboy” was featured on Spotify’s New Music Friday and hailed as one of 2018’s best songs so far by Stereogum, and “High Horse” was premiered by Zane Lowe as his World Record on Beats 1. Kacey debuted “Space Cowboy” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and has made additional high-profile TV appearances surrounding Golden Hour’s release, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, TODAY, and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Kacey will tour in support of Golden Hour this fall on her headlining Oh, What A World: Tour, kicking off in Europe and including a date at London’s legendary Wembley Arena. Kacey recently headlined C2C: Country to Country Festival, including a sold-out O2 Arena in London, and is currently on tour with Little Big Town. She will play Stagecoach and join Harry Styles on tour this summer. Kacey first received massive critical acclaim and recognition with the 2013 release of her gold-certified debut album Same Trailer Different Park. The album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, making Kacey the first solo female in 5 years to top the chart with a rookie release and only the seventh to do so in Nielsen SoundScan’s 22-year history. Same Trailer Different Park earned Kacey 2 Grammy Awards for Best Country Album and Best Country Song (“Merry Go ‘Round”), 2 CMA Awards for “New Artist of the Year” and “Song of the Year” (“Follow Your Arrow”), and an ACM Award for Album of the Year. Kacey’s follow-up album Pageant Material was released in 2015, earning Kacey her second No. 1 debut on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and soaring to No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. Kacey has toured extensively with artists including Willie Nelson and Katy Perry, and has sold out headlining dates across the U.S. and at London’s iconic Royal Albert Hall. “I really wanted this album to have a classic feel, like a lot of the records I know and love,” says Musgraves, who name-checks artists like Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell and Ronnie Milsap as influences on Pageant Material‘s easygoing stride. “I intended on it having a laid-back yet lush, slightly kitschy, western vibe. And most of all, I wanted it to feel like me.” Appropriately, all thirteen of the album’s songs were co-written by Musgraves, who teamed up with the same group of songwriters who’d helped bring Same Trailer Different Park to life several years earlier. Those names may be familiar — Brandy Clark, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, along with additions like Natalie Hemby and Ashley Arrison — but the songs are new, dreamt up during a songwriter’s retreat in West Texas as well a handful of sessions back home in Nashville. During the gorgeous “Late to the Party,” Musgraves lingers with her boyfriend before a big get-together, knowing that he, not the party, is the real destination. She kicks back and enjoys life at a slower speed with “High Time,” whose twangy chorus — punctuated by a whistled riff worthy of a high-lonesome cowboy — doubles as a nod to the childhood years Musgraves spent performing western swing music. On “Dimestore Cowgirl,” she breezes through some of the more surreal highlights of her days on the road, from an early-morning European boat ride that took her band past the White Cliffs of Dover to a night spent in the same middle-of-nowhere motel where Gram Parsons spent his final hours. “I’m still the girl from Golden,” she admits during the song’s chorus, a reminder that no matter how big her career gets, she’ll always be a small-town native. Later, with “This Town,” she stresses the importance of staying pleasant in a cozy town where everyone knows you, and during “Biscuits” — a song inspired by her mother’s advice to “kill ‘em with kindness” — she explains some simple, yet important, things she’s learned her 26 years. Musgraves recorded Pageant Material in a unique way, capturing the songs during a series of live studio sessions. The goal was to harness the energy of her concerts, rather than build a record track-by-track and overdub-by-overdub. To lighten the mood, she decorated Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A with fluorescent, life-size cacti and served fresh biscuits during breaks. She also brought a handful of plastic beauty pageant crowns into the studio and handed them out to her band, which included members of her touring lineup as well as pedal steel player Paul Franklin, drummer Fred Eltringham, and other top-tier players from the Nashville community. Musgraves pulled triple duty during the recording sessions, serving as singer, songwriter and co-producer on every track. Since Pageant Material is such a personal project, it’s only appropriate that several family members contributed to the album’s creation. “This Town” begins with the voice of Musgraves’ beloved Memaw — grandmother Barbara Taylor — who worked as an ER nurse in Texas until her passing in December 2013. “We always loved to get her going, telling stories about the crazy stuff she’d seen lately at work,” Musgraves remembers. “One night a couple years ago, we were all sittin’ around her in the living room and made her tell stories. I secretly pressed record on my phone. I just thought for some reason I should, never thinking I’d end up using it. This particular part of the record has been a source of sadness and happiness at the same time. I really miss her, but it makes me smile knowing that her voice has literally become embedded in my musical legacy.” Likewise, Musgraves’ little sister, Kelly Christine Sutton, shot the photographs for the album, including the throwback cover art. On a record that deals so heavily with Musgraves’ roots — where she came from, how she grew up, and what her small hometown looks like from afar — the presence of her relatives adds an authentic touch. “Pageant Material lives in a western-tinged world, and the songs are like little stories,” Musgraves says. “They set a vibe and a tone, and all make sense living in the same space. I think I’ll always be affected by growing up in a small town, so it still inspires a lot of my writing. But there are some viewpoints on this record that I hadn’t written from yet. More than anything, it’s life and society, making mistakes and my relationships that continue to inspire me.”