Country music needs Kacey Musgraves.
It needs her for the same reason it needs the only other straight-up country singer to play Bonnaroo earlier this month, Sturgill Simpson — to shake up a genre ruled by watered-down contemporary artists who are making a living on songs that range from culturally regressive to downright intelligence-insulting.
With her second album, Pageant Material, 26-year-old Musgraves further cements her necessity, from the clever, catchy ready-made hits like "High Time," to the more musing ballads like "Somebody to Love." All in all, the follow-up to 2013's critically acclaimed Same Trailer Different Park takes place in, well, the same park. Even after winning a Grammy and touring with Katy Perry, the Texas native is still the same old charming, rough-and-tumble cool girl who celebrates the fact that she's not "pageant material" on the title track (though with her light-up cowgirl boots, we beg to differ).
The album's 13 tracks feature some familiar credits, as Musgraves co-wrote the album with her usual clan of Brandy Clark, Luke Laird, Shane McAnally and Josh Osbourne. The singer also co-produced the effort with McAnally and Laird. It's a winning collaboration, yielding a collection of not-too-cute small-town snapshots and brutally honest, sad reflections that conjure influences like Alison Krauss. The best track, "Somebody to Love," sees Musgraves' simple, soft voice crooning, "We're all just little kids looking for love."
There may not be a "Follow Your Arrow" or "Merry Go 'Round" analog here — though "Somebody" comes close — but these songs will stay with you long after curtain call. Pageant also has fewer political statements than Same Trailer, but it still maintains Musgraves' signature themes, like being nonjudgmental and minding your own damn business. On lead-off single "Biscuits," she incites listeners to "smoke your own smokes, grow your own daisies." In "Good Ol' Boys Club," she scoffs at a male-run music industry, saying, "Another gear in a big machine don't sound like fun to me."
All of this on top of true Texas country grit, complete with twangy guitar and recorded live to give it that classic Johnny Cash-at-the-penitentiary feel.
Musgraves seems very aware of her fellow female singers who are reaching millennials, like Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. On "Die Fun," she plays on Del Rey, while making it simultaneously sadder and more lighthearted, singing "Let's love hard, live fast, die fun." Her lyrics remain tied to country and its emphasis on values like family and raising hell, but they do so in a way that is relevant to modern times, not to mention carving out a niche for the singer to stand alongside contemporaries who maybe have more name recognition, holding her own.
Country music needs a woman like Musgraves to bring in some much-needed feminism, especially when the men of the industry are selling millions of albums of trite bro country each year. She's the millennials' country singer — singin' country for people who don't like country — an artist who actually seems like she's living in the world she writes about and in the world her listeners live in.
The same pot references and costuming and wordplay on Same Trailer and Pageant Material that made her a hit at Bonnaroo are the same things that make her actually relevant to a new generation of country fans — the same things that will keep her around for a long time.
Email music@nashvillescene.com
