Kacey Musgraves is still following her arrow

Kacey Musgraves' third shot for Austin city limitsheld in June for an episode that will be the premiere of the show's fiftieth season on Saturday, was a more casual affair than most, although the Golden, Texas native complained about the difficulty of finding space in her constricting, sequined minidress take . Although her episode is one of the few in which a single artist performs for the entire hour of the show, it took Musgraves and her band more than two hours to run through their set, re-record songs, re-tune guitars and generally reveal something, as the singer put it One point: “How is the sausage made?”

From another artist, the process might have come across as sloppy. But for Musgraves, especially at this point in her career, it felt less like disorder and more like the authenticity that drove the final years of her career: Musgraves just seems uninterested in – perhaps even incapable of – being anything other than herself.

This is a decision that can come with costs. When she debuted in 2013 with Same trailer, different parkMusgraves, now 35, was a promising young country talent with a flair for pop hooks and an unusual willingness to write lyrics that were both clever and cutting, denouncing hypocrisy and intolerance among many of the fans who turned out to genre that he was drawn to. Then, with the 2018 release Golden hour, She emerged like a doll as a top-notch artist and pushed the form of country music forward. The album contained songs that, in their lush production, evoked the vastness of her native East Texas, and ones that captured the waves of new love in the simple melody of a plucked banjo. It pursued a sweeping genre vision that made robotic voices and disco beats seem like elements of country music so timeless you could almost believe it Hank did it that way.

In a rare feat for an artist who strayed from Nashville's path, Musgraves was rewarded both critically and commercially for her decision to follow her muse: Golden hour became her best-selling album and was widely celebrated, earning her the Grammy for Album of the Year and all the creative freedom an artist could only dream of. It retains its reputation six years later – in May, when Apple Music released its list of the 100 best albums ever recorded. Golden hour placed at 85, ahead of the classics by AC/DC, the Eagles and Nina Simone. The album's success in 2018 was a reminder that Musgraves was both an artist with a legacy and one in constant danger of peaking before her thirtieth birthday.

With her next project, 2021 Star-crossed, Musgraves delivered very little of what fans fell in love with Golden hour. The album was claustrophobic and tense, full of songs about divorce and self-doubt. An artist who wanted to stay on the “superstar” track Golden hour The people offered might have made different decisions regarding a follow-up examination. Love songs have a universal appeal; Divorce songs, not so much. With star-crossed, Musgraves asked listeners to dance to a disco-country tune about her ex-husband's insecurities and nod to a thoughtful song about her very specific attempts to be a good wife in a marriage that was on the rocks. She toured venues in support of the album, although they were not always sold out.

Last year offered Musgraves a bit of a fresh start. She enjoyed the biggest hit of her career, the Zach Bryan duet “I Remember Everything,” which became her first song ever billboard's Hot 100 chart. Duets with bedroom pop artist Cuco and singer-songwriter Noah Kahan followed, exposing all three of them to new audiences.

Your LP Deeper well, However, the album, released in March, was not a calculated attempt to build on those successes. She didn't ask Bryan to reciprocate with another duet or to chase the pop sound she'd explored with Cuco and Kahan. Instead, she decided to buck the trend and make a record that, in 2024, is more influenced by Simon & Garfunkel and early Bob Dylan than anything else on the radio. The album is wonderful and creatively it seems like the right choice for Musgraves. But a musician determined to fill those arenas for an upcoming fall tour might have tried harder to capitalize on recent chart successes.

Appearances on the Austin city limits Onstage, Musgraves and her band (a seven-piece group that included up to four guitarists at a time on several songs) made idiosyncratic decisions throughout the evening. They emerged to a cloud of smoke and a startling selection of opening music: “Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold,” a mournful dirge inspired by Gregorian chant with lyrics by JRR Tolkien, recorded for Peter Jackson The Hobbit. At times it was hard to tell if Musgraves was messing with the audience. Before re-recording “Too Good to Be True” due to a guitar problem, she asked the audience to “go crazy” on the second pass so that the television audience could assume that the song was particularly popular in Austin. She did a lot of talking from the stage during the taping, punctuating the set with anecdotes about her hometown of Golden and her pre-Nashville days working in an office park near the Austin airport.

A career-focused artist would likely pay attention to her brand and how to shape it for maximum appeal (imagine Taylor Swift taking the stage to the music of…). The Hobbit!), but at this point she's coming up with the biggest single of her career and six years away golden hour, It's clear that Musgraves usually veers left when she sees the path to superstardom ahead of her.

She's been doing this subtly for years, but I had no theory as to why until then ACL Stick on. Now I feel like Musgraves is deeply uncomfortable with performing in a way that feels dishonest. If you saw her perform the song “Golden Hour” at any point after her divorce from singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly, you probably heard her turn the song's final romantic sigh from a breathy delivery of the words “Golden Hour” into a suggestive one Tone-changed, “Golden Shower” turns one of the finest moments in their catalog into a teenage sex joke — and one that almost certainly means something to many in the audience. Songs are playing Deeper well which is about a guy who is also no longer in the picture, and she undercut this one too.

On “Giver/Taker,” a melancholy song about groping a lover, she sings a final refrain: “I would give you everything you wanted / And I would never ask for any of it back / And if only I could take it that way As much as I needed / I would take everything you had.” Live, she punctuated the last line with a bitter “every last f-ing thing.” On “Dinner With Friends” a Deeper well In a track that reads like a gratitude journal (the song, she explained during one of her speaking engagements, was inspired by Nora Ephron's “What I Will Miss” list, written when the author was dying of cancer), she sings : “He loves me.” in all the ways I've never felt love before.” At the show, she made impromptu remarks and immediately complained, “At least that's what I thought; I was wrong.”

The audience doesn't demand such things from an artist. The parasocial relationship between artist and fan works best when the listener has gaps that they can fill with their own imagination. We prefer to make our own meanings through the songs we care about rather than letting the artist tell us how to feel. Graham Nash didn't need to clarify that the house he and Joni Mitchell shared was no longer a very, very, very nice house after their split. But Musgraves seems to have an allergy to doing anything. Taylor Swift wrote “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” about her ability to put on a smile and put on the show every night, no matter what's going on in her life; Musgraves seems more willing to let the audience see her cry. There's a limit to how famous you can become by presenting yourself as someone who makes mistakes.

There's an interesting tension between the loose, easy-going demeanor Musgraves displays as she improvises her way through extended stage conversations and her commitment to the work itself. During the recording, she asked the audience not just to “Too Good to Be True”, but also “The Architect”, “Breadwinner” and “High Horse”. She may tone down her songs so she can get through without feeling dishonest, but she also cares deeply about them enough that if the third guitar didn't sound quite right, she'll stop the show to re-record a song.

This tension reigns throughout her work and it explains a lot. Surely an artist who moved from the theater to the arena after a creative breakthrough could take a path that would lead to packed stadiums on her next tour. But what makes Musgraves so special is that she seems willing to make decisions that will limit her rise up the Spotify charts, as long as those decisions feel right to her. Following her arrow wherever it points has served Musgraves well so far, including in her appearance at the high-pressure chronicle of a historic episode in the story Austin city limitsshe seemed more determined than ever to continue doing just that.