Song of the Day #5,829: ‘Cardinal’ – Kacey Musgraves

Continuing my countdown of 2024 notable album releases by women…

The Ladies of 2024
#7 – Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well

I really wanted to love this album, having been firmly on the Kacey Musgraves bandwagon since her 2013 debut, Same Trailer Different Park. That album was such a breath of fresh air, and might still be the best thing she’s done.

Sophomore effort Pageant Material offered more sharp songwriting, and 2018’s Golden Hour was a revelation, crossing genre boundaries on its way to a well-deserved Album of the Year Grammy.

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Song of the Day #5,757: ‘I Remember Everything’ – Zach Bryan feat. Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves’ new album hasn’t made much of a splash, with only one of its songs appearing on the Hot 100 — ‘Deeper Well,’ all the way down at #76.

But Musgraves’s duet with Zach Bryan, ‘I Remember Everything,’ is still going strong. It hit #1 weeks ago — giving both artists their first chart-topper — and is still camped out in the top ten, at #7.

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Song of the Day #5,730: ‘Deeper Well’ – Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves won an Album of the Year Grammy for 2018’s Golden Hour, a wonderful blend of moody pop and her gentle country sound. It was her third strong release in six years (not including a Christmas album), and at the time it looked like she was on her way to superstardom.

Her 2017 marriage to singer Ruston Kelly ended in divorce in 2020, prompting a break-up album that promised to be a real beauty. Instead, 2021’s Star-Crossed was a muddled misfire, an artsy album that shared none of the DNA that made her earlier work so compelling.

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Song of the Day #4,170: ‘Golden Hour’ – Kacey Musgraves

Best Albums of the 2010s – #18
Golden Hour – Kacey Musgraves (2018)

It has been an excellent decade for women in country music, even if country radio continues to stubbornly ignore their music. Five of my top 20 albums are by women who are either country (or at least country-adjacent) artists.

One of the most critically-acclaimed of those records is Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, the Texan singer-songwriter’s third and best album.

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Song of the Day #3,882: ‘Space Cowboy’ – Kacey Musgraves

The third song tied for 15th on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll is another Kacey Musgraves tune. She clearly hit a nerve with Golden Hour, at least critically. It hasn’t been a runaway commercial hit, at least not yet.

‘Space Cowboy’ was on of the album’s early singles and one of its standout tracks. Musgraves does a nice job mining the cowboy metaphor throughout, and the misdirection of “space cowboy” actually being “space, cowboy” is nifty.

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