Kacey Musgraves Essentials

Kacey Musgraves knew from the drop that there were only two ways she’d make a career: Hers or no way at all. “There’s a lot of freedom when you do that from day one, because there’s no expectations on you,” she told Apple Music. That freedom has served the country singer-songwriter well since her 2013 debut album, Same Trailer Different Park, which established Musgraves as a quietly progressive voice in a conservative field, capable of tackling subjects like LGBTQ+ rights (“Follow Your Arrow”) or the hypocrisy of small-town life (“Merry Go ’Round”) without shedding her rootsy appeal. Her Grammy-winning 2018 LP, Golden Hour, was a country-pop psychedelic romance that steered even further from Nashville conventions—as on the sweet ’70s-sounding “Butterflies”—but established a genre-bending blueprint that changed modern country for years to come. When the relationship that inspired the album’s most heart-stirring tunes dissolved, Musgraves released her intimately set three-act album, star-crossed, in 2021, questioning the matter of her own freedom with quiet frankness through ballads like “camera roll” and the reflective pop song “simple times.” But on 2024’s breezy Deeper Well, Musgraves found her own mellow rhythm, forgoing whimsical pursuits in favor of meditation and a serene inner peace.