Kacey Musgraves is not your average country artist. In a sea of arguably formulaic songs
about trucks, beer, and scorned ex-lovers, the singer-songwriter has transcended the
genre with creative, relevant and deeply personal songs. Here's some stuff you might not know
about the Nashville-based artist.
Kacey Musgraves' grandmother was instrumental in launching her career as a country star,
which began when she started singing publicly at 8 years old. At one point, her grandmother
even served as her booking agent.
"This lady, she used to be my booking agent back in the day. Slingin' some CDS out there."
"I think it paid off." "I think so."
According to ABC News, Musgraves' parents and grandparents would help her hawk CDs and
drive her around to shows in her grandparents' minivan. Her sister was and is her photographer,
and her parents would print headshots and merchandise in their print shop. Musgraves'
career was truly a family-run operation. She told ABC,
"I just had one of those families that was like, 'OK, you want to be a singer, you want
to be a performer, or whatever? OK, let's get you guitar lessons, let's load up the
minivan, let's go to shows,. Just really lucky that we had really nurturing parents and grandparents
that really encouraged us to just be who we wanted to be."
Musgraves apparently had star power from the start. According to The Guardian, she was
voted "Most Likely to Become Famous" in high school. But it didn't happen overnight. The
singer-songwriter held a number of odd jobs when she was trying to make it in music, and
lived in a shared house with two roommates.
In an interview with CMT, the Texas-bred singer revealed that her first job in Nashville was
"singing demos for writers," but she also entertained at children's birthday parties
before quitting when her bosses asked her to dress up like a French maid and sit on
the birthday boy's lap. She said,
"I only did it once or twice. I signed up because I thought I could be Cinderella or
Ariel or something like that. But I ended up having to be Hannah Montana. They'd be
like, 'This is the party, this is the time, this is the character they're requesting.'
The kids would be trying to pull my wig off."
According to One Country, Musgraves is a champion yodeler. The star was part of a duo called
Texas Two Bits, which led her to perform on the Today show during the 2002 Olympic Games.
She was such a prolific yodeler that she was honored by the Texas House of Representatives
in a resolution where they sang her highest praises.
According to the resolution, Musgraves won a number of "well-deserved honors" for her
yodeling, including the 2001 International Youth Yodeling Championship and the 2002 Patsy
Montana National Yodeling Championship. She also became
"The youngest person ever to win the Yodeler of the Year Award at the Will Rogers Cowboy
awards."
Unfortunately, most evidence of the country star's yodeling chops has been scrubbed from
the internet, but the singer did post a throwback video on Instagram, and you can listen to
one of her early yodel-filled albums, Wanted: One Good Cowboy, on YouTube.
Many music industry greats got their start on reality TV: Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson,
Cardi B, even DJ Pauly D, now one of the highest-paid DJs in the world. Musgraves tried to take
that path, too.
She competed in a fairly disastrous season of Nashville Star in 2007. If you're not familiar
with the show, it was essentially American Idol exclusively for country music. It launched
Miranda Lambert's career, but Musgraves didn't get as far. She was the fourth person cut
from the show, which meant she came in seventh. Musgraves told Yahoo!,
"It's probably a good thing that people don't remember me from that time period. I was very
young and figuring myself out musically and personally. It was a great platform to get
myself kind of accustomed to being in the industry and seeing what it was like being
away from my tiny little hometown in Texas. Being in an environment like [that] kind of
thickens your skin, but I also don't think it's very realistic, because music wasn't
made to be judged by three people."
Musgraves was just nine years old when she wrote her first song. It was called "Notice
Me," but the singer told ABC News that she doesn't remember "how good it was or what
it could have been about." But it was the start of something, because 10 years later,
she headed to Nashville to pursue her dream for real.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Musgraves revealed that she first followed her arrow
to Austin, where she learned how to write songs, put on shows and live on her own. She
soon high-tailed it to Music City, USA, at the ripe age of 19. She said,
"When I got to Nashville, I jumped right in. I didn't have a backup plan; I was super fearless."
Lucky for her, she didn't actually need a backup plan, anyway. According to her 2019
Glamour cover story, the singer-songwriter ended up co-writing Miranda Lambert's song
"Mama's Broken Heart." It was a true full-circle moment, because the pair shared a guitar teacher
when they were children, and Lambert also got her start on Nashville Star.
"I moved to Nashville when I was about 19. I figured out that you could have an actual
career as a songwriter."
Kacey Musgraves released her debut album, Same Trailer Different Park, in 2013. It went
on to win a Grammy for Best Country Album. But it wasn't technically the singer's debut.
Before Musgraves signed to Mercury Nashville, she rose through the ranks of the music industry
with her do-it-yourself spirit.
According to her profile on AllMusic, she began self-releasing music with her duo Texas
Two Bits in 2000, when they put out an album called Little Bit of Texas. She later self-released
three solo albums: 2002's Movin' On, 2003's Wanted: One Good Cowboy, and 2007's Kacey
Musgraves. Today, these albums are extremely difficult to find. The singer didn't really
attract attention from labels until after her appearance on Nashville Star. Once she
signed her deal in 2012, she hit the road with Lady Antebellum, geared up for her major-label
debut, and the rest is history.
According to Rolling Stone, Musgraves' song "Follow Your Arrow" was a rare, inclusive
rallying cry that pushed through and won a CMA Award for Song of the Year despite its
references to country music taboos like smoking weed and LGBTQ relationships. And it was nearly
someone else's song.
In an episode of Reese Witherspoon's DIRECTV series Shine On with Reese, Musgraves revealed
that she almost gave the song to Katy Perry because of label pressures about its unconventional
message.
"[My label was] like, 'People are going to hate it. You're going to go down in flames
in the country world.' And I was like, 'Look, I'm fine with that. This is something I want
to say, and there's all kinds of country people out there,' you know?"
"I even went to write with Katy Perry for her own album, not even for me, and I brought
her the idea…""...and she was like, 'Dude, I love that, but it honestly sounds like something
you should say. You should save it for yourself."
The risk was worth it. According to Wide Open Country, the song, which was co-written with
openly gay songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, soared into the Top 10 of the Billboard
Hot Country Songs Chart despite lacking country radio play.
Kacey Musgraves hasn't been shy about her drug use. After all, she's "good on green."
And her penchant for illicit substances goes beyond cannabis. Following in the footsteps
of songwriters like The Beatles, the star actually used LSD to aid her in the writing
process for the shortest song on Golden Hour.
In an Instagram post, Musgraves revealed that she wrote "Mother," which she claimed is "maybe
the most meaningful" song on her Grammy-winning album, while tripping on acid. She wrote,
"One summer night, surfing waves of LSD and feeling nostalgic for everywhere and everyone
all at once, I got a text from my mom. It made me miss her. ... And I found the thought
of this cycle overwhelming, sad, and beautiful; me sitting there in Tennessee missing my mom
in Texas who's sitting there missing her mother who passed away several years ago. And it
will go on and on. The tears were flowing. Wrote these words down and finished it the
next day."
Musgraves won't let the music industry bully her into being someone she's not. In her Glamour
cover story, Musgraves revealed that she was initially told her debut single, "Merry Go
'Round," was "too depressing." But she fought for it, and the track ended up winning a Grammy
for Best Country Song.
This happened again in 2018 when she called out the Country Music Association for its
lack of female representation. The singer lamented to Billboard that Golden Hour was
the only album by a woman nominated for Album of the Year at the CMA Awards. She ended up
crushing the competition, taking home the prize, and cementing herself with country
icons like Johnny Cash, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw.
Most recently, Musgraves slammed country music radio for underplaying women. According to
Variety, the singer's comments were ignited by a Michigan-based country music station
who admitted they're not allowed to play women artists back-to-back. She tweeted,
"Smells like white male bulls--t and why LONG ago I decided they cannot stop me. And yet,
they can play 18 dudes who sound exactly the same back to back. Makes total sense."
Musgraves didn't just meet her idol; she ended up playing alongside him. In 2012, prior to
the release of her major-label debut, Musgraves revealed that the late folk singer John Prine
was her favorite musician. She loved him so much that she failed to keep her cool when
she spotted him in the wild. She told CMT in 2018,
"I saw John Prine at a taco place one time. [...] I was like, 'Hi. Um, I'm a really big
fan. Can I get a picture with you?' I was that person."
Clearly, Prine wasn't phased by the singer's fangirl behavior, because he ended up enlisting
Musgraves to play shows with him and sing on his album. He might have even found her
admiration endearing.
According to Rolling Stone, Musgraves met Prine a second time before she hit it big.
She approached him before his annual Christmas show, where she tried to get him to smoke
weed with her.
"She wanted to take me out in the parking lot and get me high. And I said, 'I gotta
go on stage, you know? And besides, that is illegal.'"
Even though he declined, she penned the song "Burn One With John Prine." A few years later,
the folk legend encouraged Musgraves to sing the song to him during a cruise ship performance.
Following Prine's death in 2020, Musgraves performed at his live-streamed tribute.
When Kacey Musgraves met her first husband, Ruston Kelly, it seemed like serendipity.
In her 2018 Vanity Fair interview, she revealed that the pair first crossed paths during a
songwriters' showcase at the legendary Bluebird Cafe, and it mostly came down to good hair.
She didn't want to waste a good hair day at home. Kelly was playing that night, and Musgraves
was immediately taken by his music. So she asked him to collaborate. She said,
"A few months later we had a writing date, and it sounds cliché, but we had an instant
connection and we've been inseparable ever since."
Kelly had a major influence on Musgraves' writing, which led her to write a more optimistic
album. But first she had to learn how to pen a song without being heartbroken. Musgraves
said,
"I used to justify my terrible relationships thinking I could get good songs out of them,
but what kind of personal torture is that? When I met Ruston, I was like, 'F**k, now
that I'm happy, I'm not going to be able to be creative.' But the opposite happened — I
got inspired by it."
The couple announced their divorce in July 2020, so her next album may be about breakups
once again.
According to ABC News, Musgraves rescued a three-legged dog named Pearl sometime before
2014. CountryFanCast reports the puppy was hit by a car near the songwriter's home, which
led to the amputation. Musgraves told ABC,
"She's, I think, kind of a Jack Russell mix. "She's all white and has one brown spot, and
she's a little human soul, I feel like."
In January 2020, Musgraves added another rescue to her furry family. In an Instagram Story,
the singer revealed her new pooch, a "spotted tri-colored puppy" named Pepper.
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