When Kacey Musgraves burst onto the scene with her 2012 debut, Same Trailer Different Park, the alt-country artist seemed to be a figurehead for a new, more diverse, and eclectic era of Americana. Songs like “Follow Your Arrow” helped establish a fandom that appreciated Musgraves’ inclusive and accepting lyrics. But she didn’t always feel like an example of enlightenment.
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Musgraves grew up in Golden, an unincorporated community in east Texas with around 200 people. While she was certainly exposed to plenty of country and folk music in her childhood, she had less exposure to communities and people who looked, talked, and loved differently than her.
Moving to Music City, USA, was a wake-up call in more ways than one.
Kacey Musgraves Had Hard Conversation During First Nashville Years
Growing up in a place like Golden, Texas, was a double-edged sword for someone like Kacey Musgraves. “It’s different than growing up in a city where there’s, like, a million different viewpoints and there’s a million different religions and a million different cultures and languages,” Musgraves said in a 2024 interview with NPR’s Rachel Martin. “There is a lack of diversity where I grew up, and I just had this urge to see the world and travel. That’s when I started really understanding that everyone is the same, you know? And I wouldn’t have gotten that if I would have stayed there.”
Musgraves cited her perspective of the LGBTQ+ community as one of the fundamental beliefs she had to change after she left Golden. There were little to no openly LGBTQ+ people in her hometown, and Musgraves said that caused her to leave Texas “with this kind of idea that, ‘Well, people choose to be that way.’ When I moved to Nashville, I started making friends in that community. I had a boyfriend at the time who did me a huge favor. He was from a completely different upbringing than me. A liberal family in upstate New York. He had a ton of gay friends. And he just sat me down one day, and we had a real hard and honest conversation about it.”
“He was like, ‘Listen, you do not have the right perspective on this,’” she continued. “He just helped me completely open up my eyes and see, and I was just like, ‘Damn, I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to get out of where I came from and to have my eyes and my heart open to this really wonderful community. They’ve made me way more well-rounded.”
That Conversation Helped Establish Musgraves As An LGBTQ+ Ally
In hindsight, it’s hard to imagine a world without Kacey Musgraves’s outspoken advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community. From one of her first singles, “Follow Your Arrow,” to her 2018 track, “Rainbow,” many individuals in these communities have co-opted her songs as powerful anthems. She might not have spoken to many openly gay people during her East Texas childhood, but she certainly helps speak for them now that she’s a global star. Musgraves doesn’t take this responsibility lightly.
“A lot of people have said, which it didn’t occur to me this way, really, until they said it, and it made an impact on me: ‘Your music makes me feel I’m finally invited to a party that I’ve always wanted to be invited to,’” Musgraves told People in 2022. “Love is love. One of the reasons I love country music is because it is about real life, it is about real stories and real people, and that shouldn’t just include one set of people. One skin color, one political stance, on whatever, it should be everyone.”
“It wasn’t about ever pushing buttons,” Musgraves told NPR’s Rachel Martin. “It just was me observing what was happening around me and doing my job as a songwriter to put that in the form of a song. Country music is always about real people, real stories. Why wouldn’t it continue to evolve?”
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for BT PR
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