My Saturn Has Returned: I LOVE KACEY MUSGRAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Searching for a Deeper Well
Pulling off the 5, en route to Hail Mary Pizza, I saw Record Safari’s billboard: “WE BUY & SELL VINYL RECORDS, CASSETTES & CDS.” Arrow pointing down at a Twinkie-shaped building otherwise concealed from street view. Whatever marketing budget the retail vinyl game can afford paid off in an instant. I pulled over, called and asked if they carried new records.
“Yeah, which one are you looking for?” said the voice on the other line.
“Kacey Musgraves? Deeper Well?” I asked. My voice was quiet, shaky and unsure in presentation, despite the underlying confident hope.
I’d just been at Target, where the exclusive red vinyl edition of Deeper Well was sold out, but I did manage to semi-accidentally steal a bottle of The Rock’s new Papatui body wash while legitimately paying way too much for other stuff (but not, unfortunately, the exclusive red vinyl edition of Deeper Well). Driving past this big ass billboard was fate.
“Yeah, we have it,” said the voice.
About thirty seconds later I was in the store. Some forgettable but standard guitar-twiddly, kick drum driving, groove-oriented music was bumping. Thousand-dollar original pressings of Led Zeppelin records lined the walls in plastic coverings. People were flipping through crates. Craving obscurity, but acting in sync as conformist archetypes. You know, record store people.
I’m not like the rest of them. Not anymore. I’m here for one reason. I thought, approaching the register. I wasn’t sure if the woman working was who I spoke with on the phone, but I didn’t spot a “New Releases” bin and I didn’t want to get sucked into the zombified masses endlessly flicking. I knew what I wanted. I needed to get it and get out of there. So I told the woman I was the guy who just called about the Kacey Musgraves record.
“Wow, you got here suuuuuuuper quick,” she said, drawing out the reaction, delaying my mission further with each syllable.
She led me to what I logically should have been able to find myself—the “M” section—and handed me the vinyl. It wasn’t the exclusive red Target edition but a “spilled milk” colored variant with a scented sleeve, done in synergistic capitalistic collaboration with Kacey’s KM + Boy candle. I tapped my card and $35 disappeared from my digital account, like myself from the store. With Kacey’s close-up face, framed by long hair like Joni Mitchell, tucked safe under my armpit, I pushed a hat low over my sunglasses and dashed behind my tinted windows where I could cry in solitude about how I’m such a loser with terrible music taste.
Just kidding, I stood in the middle of the street and held it up triumphantly at oncoming traffic, with the joyous aloofness of a Free Hugs hippie. The car pulled up and in it was my wife: co-conspirator in this successful mission. We both love Kacey Musgraves and I want the world to know it.
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When people used to ask what kind of music I like, I would clench up, nervous to admit the truth, and say, “I like everything.” In my youth, growing up in Champaign, IL, amidst the unavoidable stench of nearby farms and the repulsive aromas in the airwaves of aughts pop country radio, sometimes I’d caveat that statement with, “Except country.” Over time, I learned that that country caveat is a dated cliche stereotype on par with “I like comedy, but women aren’t funny.” “Country,” like all genres, means nothing and something. It’s a classification used to describe a wide range of American music. Much of that music shares qualities with other forms I openly enjoy. It was a journey of self-discovery and acceptance to get here.
One time when someone asked me what kind of music I like, and I gave my standard dismissive “I like everything” answer, a friend cut in and explained for me: “He likes punk and hip-hop.” True, those are the styles that most appealed to me and the scenes in which I immersed myself as an adolescent. But by definition my love of hip-hop insinuated that I also enjoyed sounds from other genres throughout the recorded history of music. I never identified completely with any particular scene. I had a Motown phase. I genuinely believed I liked everything. Except country.
In college in LA, as a reaction to my peers’ bro-tanked descent into pop EDM slop and the wobbly dubstep fad of the early 2010s, the alt-fringes of country music pulled me in, like a homesickness magnet. It took leaving my hometown for me to appreciate it, and abandoning a place where a small but loud segment of the population for some reason has Southern accents and listens exclusively to Miranda Lambert made me see the comforting appeal of ambitionless mediocrity. I got into Steve Earle and the Avett Brothers. Dabbled with Sturgill Simpson. Let down my guard and welcomed in a hefty dose of Americana. It helped that I was starting to drink a lot and a lot of country songs are about drinking.
Around this period, in conjunction with my valiant, wholehearted (& in retrospect, admittedly ignorant) rejection of house and techno, I realized that the aspect of music I care about most is lyricism. Whatever sounds are underneath the vocals almost don’t make a difference, as long as the lyrics resonate. I liked all music except country because my (in retrospect, admittedly ignorant) understanding of country was that it spoke only to a populace who I believed (in retrospect, correctly) to be, admittedly, ignorant.
Then I heard Kacey Musgraves. “Blowin’ Smoke.” I (admittedly) might have been drawn in by the photo of Kacey on the album cover for 2012’s Same Trailer, Different Park, but her attitude captivated me for the same reason as so many punk and hip-hop artists. She had a defiant, anti-establishment air. Beneath that attitude, she projected a sense of acceptance of the inevitable pain and downtroddenness of her upbringing and life outlook. She sang about dreaming of quitting her dead end job. In the video for “Blowin’ Smoke,” Kacey plays a diner waitress, talking shit with the rest of the staff during cig breaks. Amidst the dregs of the genre, Kacey was a real modern incarnation of yesteryear’s outlaws. “Blowin’ Smoke” captured the essence of country music—a tone that had been polished of its grit for decades, anesthetized into lifeless white patriotic nostalgia porn throughout the Bush years—yet presciently incorporated the sounds of the future. Heeeeeeeey ayyyyyy!
Too much has been written about Country Music’s one-way colonizing of pop rap with acts like Sam Hunt or Jelly Roll, as well as Nashville’s racist categorical exclusion of Lil Nas X or Beyoncé. Genres only exist because companies depend on arbitrary classification for profiteering purposes. Yet they do have context and history. When marketing labels are stripped away, however, supposedly different styles of music tend to have more in common with each other than noticeable differences. The best music blurs boundaries, and thankfully the young people of today don’t seem to care as much about labels and definitions. The topic is too complicated to get into in one simple newsletter, but I’m thinking about it because “Blowin’ Smoke” definitely was on the early side of bringing pop rap sounds into country music in a meaningful, not-forced-and-corny way. Kacey exhales over the beat like the best of them. Its release also injected a punk energy into country music around the same time Odd Future and Travis Scott were doing the same.
My Kacey Musgraves fandom continued on at a distance in the post-Same Trailer, Different Park years. I would play “Blowin’ Smoke” for people almost as a joke, even though I genuinely enjoyed it on an unironic level. The same was true for a handful of other country hits, like Toby Keith’s “Red Solo Cup” and Eric Church’s “Drink in My Hand.” Again, I was drinking a lot. “Follow Your Arrow” is the other hit from that album with an anti-conformist message that appealed to me in young adulthood.
By the time Kacey’s fourth album Golden Hour came out in 2018, it was clear that she was a fully-formed, well-rounded artist who, like Taylor Swift before her, had transcended her country music roots and embraced pop perfection. That album is an undisputed classic. The opening lyrics to “Slow Burn” are so good I’m just going to paste them below and leave it at that.
Born in a hurry, always late
Haven't been early since '88
Texas is hot, I can be cold
Grandma cried when I pierced my nose
Good in a glass, good on green
Good when you're puttin' your hands all over me
Okay, I’m not going to leave it at that. I asked a friend and fellow Musg-head what “Good in a glass, good on green” meant and although he unfortunately consulted Genius, he explained that the last two lines of this verse are a sort of riddle where the answer is “Slow Burn.” Slow burn of alcohol, of weed, of sex. By the way, did you know you can still buy KM + Boy’s Slow Burn candle? We love it when our heroes monetize.
It’s hard to follow a masterpiece and I hope the Kacey stans out there don’t dox me but 2021’s Star-Crossed was an absolute dud. It was a concept album about divorce, I think, from reading the Wikipedia. I didn’t really listen to it. It bummed me out. Golden Hour was an encapsulation of life’s little ideal moments. The music had to sound perfect in order for listeners to feel that subtle euphoria. Star-Crossed had none of that, which, to give Kacey credit, was a pretty punk way to follow up a classic.
But now Kacey is back with another undisputed classic, and an instant one at that. Her latest LP, Deeper Well, is so good it made me pull over and run into a record store and spend $35. The title track is one of her best songs ever. Kacey talks about how she used to roll out of bed and hit the gravity bong. Like on “Blowin’ Smoke,” she lays bare her underlying despair. But then she sings about cutting toxic people and habits out of her life, learning how to take care of herself, and finding a deeper well. Her Saturn has returned.
I no longer understand or care to learn whether Spotify’s playlists are the same for everyone or algorithmically tailored to my listening habits, but “Deeper Well” currently sits atop the Pop Country playlist. I mentioned to my wife that I thought Kacey was underrated, and she told me she thinks Kacey is “just rated.” A lot of people love her, and it’s my own semi-IRL friend group and For You feed that never seems to mention her. But I genuinely think that people who don’t traditionally listen to country, or poppier music, will find a lot to love in Kacey Musgrave’s music if they check it out. I’m sayin’ goodbye to the shame that’s real good at wasting my time, no regrets baby, I love Kacey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On first listen the rest of Deeper Well has a one-note tone. It’s folksy, and for some reason, probably the album cover, Joni Mitchell keeps coming to mind. There aren’t obvious bangers like on Same Trailer, Different Park or Golden Hour. But the more that spilled milk vinyl keeps spinning on my record player, the more my appreciation for individual tracks and the collective sequence grows. “Anime Eyes” has definitely been stuck in my head. I’m not gonna review it but I implore you to listen for yourself.
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The other night I went to a Leftover Crack show. Maybe I’ll write another newsletter about it, but probably not. They’re a New York band from the early 2000s that evolved out of the crusty ska punk of Choking Victim. They were the biggest band of all time according to everyone in Champaign’s local punk scene, and the live shows I’ve seen have always been raucous and incredible, but also disastrous for many reasons I’ll maybe get into in that other newsletter, this recent one included.
The reason I mention that show is because the crowd was full of aging punks who just wanted to relive the cathartic release of angst that moshing and skanking in the pit provides. Leftover Crack still plays songs about feeling hopeless and killing cops. Their Saturn might have returned, but you wouldn’t know it.
It’s easy for fans to write off artists who find happiness, when it’s sorrow that brings them together in the first place. Deeper Well is not quite, but almost the equivalent of Andre 3000 playing ayahuasca flutes instead of rapping. The artist has found contentment, but the fan base is not content with change. (I’m basing this all on the 6.8 Pitchfork review I just skimmed).
Aside from lyricism, the most attractive quality to me in a musician is their commitment to being their own true self. People change over time. I used to dismiss country. Now I’ve embraced it. I used to hate going on hikes. Despised nature. Now my Saturn’s returning, bitch. I’m going out into the woods, searching for a deeper well. I’m still not sure of myself most days—as my shaky voice asking about the Kacey record revealed—so I don’t expect artists to be fully honest either. When a rare artist like Kacey comes along who is seemingly so much herself—both in pain and pleasure, and everywhere in between—it makes me want to listen, and believe.
So I figured I might as well write a newsletter being my own true self and declaring my appreciation for Kacey Musgraves. LISTEN TO DEEPER WELL. JUST TRUST ME, BRO.