Review Summary: Kacey Musgraves stands out in 2010s pop country, leveling honest critiques of Middle American life and rejecting the social conservatism and ill-advised genre-bending of many of her peers.
It's 2018 and it's never been harder to picture yourself in a country song. At a time when so many of the biggest stars in pop country pedal in hard partying escapism, vague romantic melodrama or grunting nationalism, the genre eschews complication, insecurity, and mundanity: the very things of everyday life for most of us. Mainstream country never feels like it's playing it straight with you.
It's for these reasons that Kacey Musgraves is so often described as refreshing, honest, real. In a sweet, silvery voice, she sings about human-scale failings, lifestyle tolerance, recreational pot, and the quiet desperations of small town American life.
Same Trailer Different Park is Musgraves' 2013 major label debut, and at the time of this writing, she's followed it up with the similarly excellent
Pageant Material in 2015 and is slated to release
Golden Hour early this year. Her output has made her a peculiar figure in 2010s country: cutting against the grains of both conservative country ethos as well as the genre-bending, market-tested hit machine that's still printing money in Nashville. Her music is a most graceful cutting of mainstream country's bull***.
Musically, Musgraves may not deliver groundbreaking ideas in mid-tempo pop country, but she resists the worst of modern country's instincts like electronic beats and contrived, booming choruses. In this way, her music sounds like refreshing revisits of pop country from the '70s to the '90s (better times for the genre). Where Musgraves truly shines is in her lyrics, which set her apart from her vapid peers on the radio.
Same Trailer Different Park propelled her to this status largely on the strength of two songs in particular: "Merry Go 'Round" and "Follow Your Arrow." "Merry Go 'Round" is a beautiful coming-to-terms about the traditions of life in Middle America that leave so many in cycles of failure and dreams delayed. "If you don't a have two kids by 21/You're probably gonna die alone/At least that's what tradition told you," she begins, laying out the small-town expectations that are inevitably dashed by our imperfections. When she sings "And just like dust we settle in this town," Musgraves is disarming in her gently delivered but blunt honesty. For so many country fans, this is
them in a country song.
"Follow Your Arrow" jubilantly steps out of the shadows of heartland social conservatism into, well, the 21st Century. Musgraves again tackles societal expectations, except at a more universal level, to say that the pressures to drink less or more, be skinnier or fatter, or be religious or not are just not worth listening to. At the end of the day, you have to do you, or you won't be happy. Her not-so-veiled acceptance of homosexuality in the chorus ("Make lots of noise/Kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls, if that's what you're into") shouldn't be groundbreaking in this day and age, but for country music, and for the closeted young kids of conservative America who are short on familiar allies, it is a powerful statement.
The warm-hearted "Silver Lining" is another highlight, as is "Blowin' Smoke," a swaggering track of trash-talking waitresses just scraping by. But love lost is central to most of the rest of
Same Trailer Different Park (at the end of the day, this is still a country album after all). But even here, Musgraves' direct lines and un-cluttered delivery set her apart from the booming, vain heartbreak songs that typically crack American Country Countdown nowadays. "Keep It To Yourself" is a beautiful song on the racing midnight thoughts after a breakup, and closer "It Is What It Is" is a surrender to a long-distance one night stand, whatever it means the morning after.
Same Trailer Different Park and her more recent work have netted Musgraves a Grammy for Best Country Album in 2013 as well as several CMA awards, but that doesn't mean the equation is changing all that much for pop country that dominates the charts in 2018. Bro-country still holds the field, and some of the biggest hits in country only signify "country" because of a singer's exaggerated southern twang.
But Musgraves is among a select few pop country artists who seem to understand that the most powerful drama, humor, and inspiration often comes from everyday life, and that the truth is often stranger, and more beautiful, than fiction. Whether its honesty in portraying Middle American sentiments or reconnecting with a simple country music sound without muddying its waters with the misguided influences of other Top 40 trends, Musgraves keeps things simple and real. And that truly is refreshing.
