Last week, number 10 on the country billboard charts was “Follow Your Arrow” by one Kacey Musgraves. If you didn’t know it, Kacey had a smash year with her debut solo album Same Trailer, Different Park and also managed to write a couple more of the best songs of late for other artists (see: “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which I somewhat desperately insisted was available on Sunfly Karaoke to a KJ last night – it was not available.) She just did it big at the Grammys and suddenly got the crossover attention she deserves (more than just that one really excitable music critic on NPR.)
I heard the first single off this album, “Merry Go Round,” last March while I was driving to Legal Ethics class. I must have been driving a goddamn Volvo then. I definitely started talking to myself:
“What is this. What IS THIS. WHAT IS THIS.” And squealed. As soon as I heard her name, I repeated it over and over again and ignored the majority of class as I furiously looked up everything about her.
Before we can talk about “Follow Your Arrow,” we need to talk about “Merry Go Round.”
When I heard “Merry Go Round,” it thrilled me. It was so strikingly different from everything else I’d heard on a country radio station in years – in the tone, in the sound quality, the instrumentation, the beat, the subtlety, the voice, the story, the words! And it was played right after a song called “Love Like Crazy” by Lee Brice.
“Crazy” is a classic of the WORST of its kind. It has all the terrible elements of unlistenable tracks (noise, blurry guitar crashing around, bothersome, illegitimate melody, repetitious and boring build-ups), and tells a terrible, moralistic tale of loving your way out of poverty on your knees, with a pair of bootstraps and a wife who won’t stop letting babies erupt from her body.
Here’s a taste:
They called them crazy when they started out
Said, “Seventeen’s too young to know what love’s about”
They’ve been together fifty-eight years now
That’s crazy
He brought home sixty-seven bucks a week
Bought a little 2 bedroom house on Maple Street
Where she blessed him with six more mouths to feed
Now that’s crazy
I wasn’t kidding: check that passive construction! It’s told as a joke – “blessing” being how we actually “should” think of children, but it becomes ironic when paired with the struggle inherent in providing food for a growing family on one low income – and as teenagers, no less! The first time I heard this number I remember being instantly struck by that little joky irony – “She gave him six more mouths to feed” – as if she did that of her own regard, as if she did it on her own and chose to do it, as if she bore no understanding of the depth and the teetering frailty of their situation and just kept giving birth for fun, as if she bore no risk, no pain, no work, and no terrible, profound, dangerous life changing procedures in this process. Boy did he have to keep working hard, though. I say this not to discount the undeniable efforts of a low-wage, blue-collar worker or prevent him from telling his valid side of the story, I say this because I find that phrasing to be insulting. But how did he do it, anyway?:
Just ask him how he did it
He’ll say, “Pull up a seat
It’ll only take a minute
To tell you everything”
Be a best friend, tell the truth
And overuse “I love you”
Go to work, do your best
Don’t outsmart your common sense
Never let your prayin’ knees get lazy
And love like crazy
Salt-of-the-earth garbage, basically, with the repeated addendum of, “Do not get off your knees, peasant. You should thank and bless the Lord for letting you live at all – and you complain?”
Ok, if you protest: no, saying “I love you” often, telling the truth and trusting your instincts aren’t “garbage” ideas. But they aren’t the only way you survive, they’re tips for any life, and they certainly don’t propel your exulted, penitent self out of the cycles of poverty, as you’ll see here in a moment.
The song is sanitary and it’s a fantasy and it doesn’t even stick to its own tale of poverty being its own reward. Motherfucker Narrator sells his “two-room computer shop” to Microsoft (what?) who indeed, “Pay like crazy,” and fuck all that other shit – they’re rich now! Problems solved! How did he have a computer shop? When did he get one? Is he Steve Jobs? Did he fucking invent computers? What the hell is going on, I mean, okay, yeah, a lot of the computer creating folks didn’t finish college and managed to get by on the merit that they were engineering visionaries, but is that who we are hoping is the relatable hero of this goddamn little ode?
I really hate this song. So happy you teenagers got knocked up and married and moved into a tiny shitty house with a bunch of screaming infants and then somehow completely independently made the right bet and are now hella rich.
So after that bullshit, after the pause, after the shout out of how we were listening to “99.5 the wolf OwwwooOOOO” – when the soft, rolling strums of a banjo and one tom kicked up bit of dust and started curling out of the speakers and Kacey started singing, I wanted to stop and cry. Maybe I did stop and cry. This is how she begins:
If you ain’t got two kids by 21,
You’re probably gonna die alone.
Least that’s what tradition told you.
And it don’t matter if you don’t believe,
Come Sunday morning, you best be
there in the front row like you’re supposed to.
Jesus fucking Christ. I want to make sure I’m driving the point home hard enough. You read what Lee Brice was just singing about, and I think that establishes the culture of the radio air waves, and is just a stand in for everything you hear, all of the time, but Jesus Christ. She just fucking shattered Lee Brice’s goddamn computer shop. Why did you have kids as a teenager? Because your parents did. Because your sister did and your friends are doing it and they told you to be abstinent in health class – because there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do and you’re scared – you’re scared that there’s no other people out there you can find to love you, because where are you from, where are you from, nowhere? If anyone leaves, do they ever come back? Can they find it, if they leave? Are they dead out there? Are they different?
You’re scared you’re gonna die alone, like every other goddamn human on the earth, and in this world, Kacey says, this is how we cope. We answer a goddamn Shakespearean command with a slew of babies bound to end up dealing meth at the skate park. That is what our tradition is, says Kacey, and I call our tradition’s bluff, and I point out what we all secretly know: our tradition is our fear, and we cling to it through shaking tears.
And that’s only half the first stanza. Suggesting that some people might not believe in Christianity but go to church to live up to an established social doctrine and class rules in order to not be ostracized from society and perhaps die alone – suggesting that – is a fucking balls out move. Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t suggest that to half my extended family: even though they can hear me talk and can see me with their eyes and see what I post on Instagram any other day of the week, it is simply not something that we say.
The chorus of this song is the worst part, it goes on with the “merry” pun and points out how everybody in the family is hooked on something that could basically be interchangeable and is a sedative that helps them “settle in this town” as if “dust.” The timing is too slow and the melody becomes rather thin and monotonous. It’s not terrible, but it’s not as great as it could be. That last part (just like dust we settle in this town) is a cliché, true, but I don’t mind it, because I can feel the dust.
The next, and really final verse, is maybe my favorite:
We think the first time’s good enough.
So, we hold on to high school love.
Sayin’ we won’t end up like our parents.
Tiny little boxes in a row.
Ain’t what you want, it’s what you know.
Just happy in the shoes you’re wearin’.
Same checks we’re always cashin’ to buy a little more distraction.
It barely even bears analysis, it’s so neatly put. Did you start crying? I read the stanza and I start crying. Maybe I’m sort of manic-ly writing an essay in a bar and a little emotional anyway but whatever. You know these people, these everyone, right? I mean if you’re not from certain neighborhoods in Portland or San Francisco or New York, I guess, if you’re from some shit place like all the rest of us, then you know, and you know what it means simply that you left and you are still breathing and you aren’t a ghost, and even if you don’t do shit otherwise, you know that they didn’t want you to leave but you did and that is something, that is something: they didn’t pull you into their bed of terror and pull the blankets up to your chin and keep you warm and stupid, whispering, and you repeat their hisses, saying, “maybe I like this after all, maybe this is just the best thing to do.” Have you ever had a friend in an abusive relationship, have you ever heard your friend talk themselves in circles?
At least I know how he’s going to hurt me, you know, I can predict it – it’s always going to happen right, no matter who I’m with? At least now, now I know what to expect . . .
If I leave him, he’ll just go find somebody else . . . I can take it . . . I can deal with it . . . what if they can’t? I need to protect everybody else in the world from seeing this person standing in their kitchen . . .
If I leave, what will become of this place . . . it might hang itself in my basement, this town might be dead when I come back, where will it keep its beers and its hugs, you can already see the holes it has punched in the walls and the scratches that are dug into the floor and the red circles rubbed into its eyes, what if I’m not here to stop it, what if I’m not here to stop it . . .
Leave.
Leave.
Leave.
Says Kacey. And sure, it half falls on deaf ears, and here come all the folks to tell her she’s encouraging drug use and spreading AIDS. “THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH COUNTRY MUSIC” they shout in YouTube comments.
“SHE CAN KEEP SLUTTING ON, I SUPPOSE, BUT I AND MY DAUGHTERS WON’T BE LISTENING TO THIS SMUT.”
And when they say that, they’re saying this:
You don’t know him. Not like I know him.
You don’t understand. You don’t know what he’s been through.
Kacey isn’t the first girl to do this, of course, but this is the real dirt, the dirt I’m so happy to shove my heels into again. It’s the same kind of dirt Dolly Parton has brought us for the past forty goddamn years, since she premiered her first album “Hello, I’m Dolly” and sang “Dumb Blonde” to Porter Wagoner’s skeptical audience – pointing out, of course, that she is not, and when she then said, “Just Because I’m a Woman” and then, most of all, when she said, concerning her Tennessee mountain home upbringing:
No amount of money could buy from me
The memories that I have of then
No amount of money could pay me
To go back and live through it again
This is the dirt of Appalachia, and of country music, and it’s the sound of women screaming in cabins as they give birth on the floor that is made of dirt, calling for the water, or going along to live in a trailer on the prairie of North goddamn Dakota and work in Williston’s war-zone Walmart while your husband drills for oil, or of taking the bus at five am from the half grown suburb with no sidewalks and no grocery store, the dirt is under their fingernails and ground into the creases on the sides of their eyes and it’s being swept out and off the porch every day, every day, take your boots off. It’s not clean and we don’t thank God for that. We don’t thank god for that, we talk about how there were some of them who survived and some of them who didn’t and we grind our teeth on everything that we are and hope it turns out to be a ladder.
That’s what I’m hoping we’re coming back to, Kacey Musgraves and all us devotees and makers of country music, and I’m hoping that it’s gonna be good.
Tags: 100% agreement from nicole, country music, Kacey Musgraves, Kimberly Fanshier, music
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YES!
Go Kacey Musgraves, and go you as well.
This is a great piece, thanks for sharing! Kasey Musgraves is THE BEST, and those people who call her songs “smut” and accuse her of “slutting” are to be pitied and ignored.
Right now my favorite KM song is “Blowin’ Smoke.” It’s so perfect for when I talk about how I’m going to change this or that crappy part of my life…but I’m just…yep.
I got “Follow Your Arrow” from the Starbucks app, with the free-music-for-hipsters benefit last year. I loved it, but for whatever reason didn’t follow through on buying the rest of the album. Got paid today, so that’s gonna change.
Also, did not know that “Mama’s Broken Heart” was written by her. I feel that I should have known just by the song itself.
Love her, love her, love her, and I almost ran a stop sign the first time I heard the chorus of “Follow Your Arrow” on the country airwaves. Keep singing, Kacey.
This was fantastic. I’ve been hearing about Kacey Musgraves for a while and haven’t found the time to go find out for myself. I’m so glad you wrote about her.
KACEY MUSGRAVES IS AWESOME! I would have talked her up to you but I kind of assume none of my friends are interested in my country music collection, so I’m glad you read this and now I have a reason to announce to you how fantastic she is.
I love you, and The Toast, and everyone in the bar where you manic-ly wrote this.
I had such a similar reaction to yours when I first heard “Merry Go Round” and am so happy to see it shining like a diamond among the dreck of most Top-40 country. And your second-to-last paragraph … goosebumps.
So, any other recommendations in the “country telling it like it is” genre? I listen to a lot more James McMurtry than is strictly healthy and need to branch out.
HAYES CARLL. “She Left Me For Jesus.”
Yes! Also “KMAG YO YO.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qy7fPGKCNU
Brandy Clark! She also helped write Mama’s Broken Heart. Her new album is full of songs that other artists rejected, because they knew they wouldn’t play on radio. Needless to say, the album is amazing. Try Pray to Jesus for starters.
Pray to Jesus is so good, so so good
Also “Crazy Women” is fantastic.
WHY ISN’T BRANDY CLARK MORE FAMOUS?! (other than being an out lesbian in country music)
oh man “the day she got divorced” gives me chills every time
Iris Dement! “We got CEO’s making 200 times their workers’ pay/ But they’ll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage/ And if you don’t like it, mister, they’ll ship your job to some third-world country ‘cross the sea/ And it feels like I am/ Living in the wasteland of the free.” Her song Our Town is really good, too.
Lindi Ortega
Lindi Ortega’s “Tin Star” is excellent. I found a new crop of folks to listen to from this article here: http://music-mix.ew.com/2013/12/18/best-country-a… (And also some pretty funny follow-up commentary on how every single country music song out there is exactly the same here: http://music-mix.ew.com/2013/12/23/country-music-…
I have loved Jason Isbell’s voice since his first album with Drive-By Truckers, and his solo work is just as good. Not all of The Civil Wars is specifically country, but “Devil’s Backbone” is a great tune from their most recent album. Julie Roberts isn’t on this list, but she has a pretty traditional sound that hasn’t been pop-ified yet.
thank you guys! damn, Lindi Ortega is frickin awesome. Tin Star is wow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG_2rZ4UzN0#aid=P…
Townes Van Zandt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx4PsxUvMqY
Brandy Clark’s already been mentioned, but there’s also Ashley Monroe. I think every “best country albums” list I saw at the end of last year had Musgraves, Clark, or Monroe at the top of it. The more popular Miranda Lambert gets with mainstream country fans, the less people remember to talk about what a great songwriter she is, but she really is. And Monroe and Lambert are in the Pistol Annies together, too.
On the more alt-side of country: Caitlin Rose, Amanda Shires, Lindi Ortega, to name a few.
DITTO HAYES CARLL
Anything in particular? Or just all of it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qy7fPGKCNU
personally all about “knockin’ over whiskeys”
<3 I love Kacey Musgraves and I love this.
YES YES YES ALL OF THIS.
God, I fucking hate that Love Like Crazy song, and those six months back when it came out when it was everyone’s Facebook status, and his grovelly cracky voice. I could read pieces like this on the current state of country music’s image forever.
I’d also like an article that discusses why that godawful creepy stalker song was so popular, the one about the dude driving his pickup into his ex girlfriend’s yard and beaming her window with lights and drinking beer all night? REDNECK CRAZY, that’s the one.
I listen to country music all the god-damned time and I couldn’t find a SINGLE FUCKING ARTICLE on why that song was LEGIT TERRIFYING AND ABUSIVE.
Fuck, I know right? And how it’s basically all her fault for making him that way? EW. That song gives me the creeps.
Toast Feminist Country Reviews? I say yes please.
YESSSS
There is a lot more where this came from!
Encore! Encore!
WANT
Oh god yeah. I’ve been looking at the song and reactions to it as compared to female revenge songs. The problem is it’s so fucking catchy to my tasteless, tasteless ears.
And so fucking entitled, because he knows she won’t call the police.
Dammmmmmnnnnn this is good. I’ve gradually made my way from the sticks to some hip Portland neighborhood and this really hit home.
This. This is precisely how I felt after watching the movie “Nebraska.” At least I left.
How many times we all had that conversation about how long it takes to drive places in crusty recliners with cousins we see twice a decade? How many questions about cars people supposedly owned?
I saw “Nebraska” directly after coming home from a trip there visiting family. Some folks mistook for cruel parody what were in fact verbatim conversations I had heard a week before! “Whaddyawanna do THAT for?!”
Hmmmm I think I had a very different “growing up in Nebraska” experience than the rest of you folks, because I moved back 2 years ago and am pretty happy! But I am close to being the only one of my friends unmarried and I’m 26…
Love, love, love, love Kacey Musgraves. Thanks for this!
Yes! I’ve been stanning for Kacey Musgraves for over a year now, trying to get more people to listen to her. I had a similar experience the first time I heard “Merry Go Round”, but when I immediately chased it with “Follow Your Arrow” I fell deeply, irrevocably in love. I want so much more from her and like her.
I totally pulled over my car and cried the first time I heard it too. And it was kind of amazing I ever did hear it, since I avoid country music. Too many flashbacks to the years I spent in a small town where everyone judged every single thing you did, and you always came up wanting.
BRB, ordering this album NOW. “Mama’s Broken Heart” is one of the best songs ever, in any genre, and I will personally fight anyone who says different. THANK YOU for this article.
Kacey Musgraves also co-wrote the best song on the show “Nashville” – “Undermine” from the first season. It fits in her catalog nicely.
Ahhh that makes so much sense! I love that song!
Love her. I played “Follow Your Arrow” for a class made up mostly of graduating seniors on our last day in spring semester last year, before I left Ohio for a new job. <3
Do you know the John Prine song Unwed Fathers? If not, I strongly suggest you listen to it IMMEDIATELY.
I’ve noted before that Kaceys sincerity and poetic bluntness endear her to me very alike to the ways of my beloved John prine!
This is so damn good, thank you. Thanks also for noting that there’s always someone in the world of country speaking plain truth about the harder realities, but we get dazzled by Big & Rich or whoever’s loudest or revving their engines harder. Kacey Musgraves is a gem. If Public Enemy was CNN for the ‘hood, she’s MSNBC for those of us living between aluminum walls.
my gf always listens to 94.9 THE BULL in the carand each time I pray for Kacey Musgraves to come on. but it’s mostly songs about drinking moonshine in parking lots. (and driving home afterward?)
I have to ask…were you headed to a legal ethics class at Lewis and Clark? If so, chances are high that my dad was teaching it…
Also, thanks for this. It’s great.
I was at Portland community college in fact! (para)legal ethics!
Ahh I heard this song on the radio recently (I’ve started listening to the local country station because it can’t be any worse than the shit on the pop ones, right?) and I made my boyfriend stay in the car and listen to the end because it’s amazing.
THIS. My mom, who grew up in a beyond small town in Oklahoma, is rightfully obsessed with Kacey, and I mean, I am too, but since I only lived in a house with underwear as insulation in a different tiny town a few months as a baby before I moved to various suburbs of Portland (haha), I can’t relate relate on the same level, other than seeing this in my family and hearing in my mom’s voice when she sing along how much she wishes this kind of real talk was around when she was growing up. It really helped me understand her on a whole new level and I love Kacey Musgraves so much for that.
And “Mama’s Broken Heart” oh man. My mom printed the lyrics up and I worked up the chords on guitar and I accompanied her. She’s basically an Okie Linda Belcher and you can’t say no if she wants to sing something unless you’re a monster.
THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT HER TOO. I think she popped up on one of my Pandora stations awhile back and I immediately went “Wait, who IS she, why haven’t I heard of her before?”
In terms of music recs, if I can branch out sideways from country into blues/Americana, I would like to take a moment to rec Hurray for the Riff Raff, because we need more queer feminist folk bands fronted by WoC please.
Fantastic essay.
Also, I mostly listen to weirdo metal–like, stuff with skulls, dead tress and/or bongs on the cover art–but I cannot stop listening to this song. She’s so great!
I have so many goddamn feelings about Kacey Musgraves. Is it stupid that “Blowin Smoke” makes me cry sometimes? I don’t care. Man, I’m out here goin’ broke. It just felt like, holy shit, yes this is what my people are like. This is what I’m like. I don’t think smoking is gross (I know it is, ok); I don’t wear yoga pants to work out in my hip downtown gym with my frappacino. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But listening to KM is like slipping into my favorite pair of jeans. The best.
Also, it kills me that she played this at the Grand Ole Opry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ugS08zy1cA&l…
ALSO HER DRESS HAS A CAPE.
fin.
Kacey Musgraves is everything I always wished Taylor Swift would be.
Kacey Musgraves is everything I always wished Taylor Swift would be.
We don’t thank god for that, we talk about how there were some of them who survived and some of them who didn’t and we grind our teeth on everything that we are and hope it turns out to be a ladder.
This, this, this, this. Would just keep copying and pasting “this” until the end of time because I feel so strongly about what you’re saying here.
I haven’t heard the entirety of Same Trailer, Different Park, but I have had “Follow Your Arrow” stuck in my head since I saw her performance at the Grammys.
I just feel so, so, so strongly about class representation, especially in music and it’s so important to me to hear music that reflects the lives/legacies of working people (I mean, yeah, I also fucking love aspirational music, but recognize that most of that also comes from a place of need/want/hope driven by certain class realities.) I am the kind of sucker who cries over “Badlands” by Bruce Springsteen and “Tha Crossroads” by Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony with equal fervor.
We don’t thank god for that, we talk about how there were some of them who survived and some of them who didn’t and we grind our teeth on everything that we are and hope it turns out to be a ladder.
This, this, this, this. Would just keep copying and pasting "this" until the end of time because I feel so strongly about what you're saying here.
I haven't heard the entirety of Same Trailer, Different Park, but I have had "Follow Your Arrow" stuck in my head since I saw her performance at the Grammys.
I just feel so, so, so strongly about class representation, especially in music and it's so important to me to hear music that reflects the lives/legacies of working people (I mean, yeah, I also fucking love aspirational music, but recognize that most of that also comes from a place of need/want/hope driven by certain class realities.) I am the kind of sucker who cries over "Badlands" by Bruce Springsteen and "Tha Crossroads" by Bone Thugs 'n Harmony with equal fervor.
The other day I was having a conversation with my dude about the “worst” musics so I started thinking about country music again, which I have done periodically for a long time, since I grew up in and left “Pennsyltucky.” Everything I hate about country music is exactly what you describe and everything I love about country music (aka basically just all of the qualities of Dolly Parton) is exactly what you describe. Thank you for introducing me to Kacey Musgraves.
The other day I was having a conversation with my dude about the "worst" musics so I started thinking about country music again, which I have done periodically for a long time, since I grew up in and left "Pennsyltucky." Everything I hate about country music is exactly what you describe and everything I love about country music (aka basically just all of the qualities of Dolly Parton) is exactly what you describe. Thank you for introducing me to Kacey Musgraves.
I’m a terrible snob about country, because what I love I love but I just cannot with the Trucks & Butts songs so I wait until smart friends recommend things or I accidentally run across them on the alt-country Rdio or Spotify stations. Which means I did not know about “Mama’s Broken Heart.” And then I went and found Musgraves singing it and now my life is better.
I'm a terrible snob about country, because what I love I love but I just cannot with the Trucks & Butts songs so I wait until smart friends recommend things or I accidentally run across them on the alt-country Rdio or Spotify stations. Which means I did not know about "Mama's Broken Heart." And then I went and found Musgraves singing it and now my life is better.
Oh, and while I’m here, I’ll recommend Laura Cantrell (“Kitty Wells’ Dresses”) and Lydia Loveless (“Steve Earle”) and heartily second Caitlin Rose (“Shanghai Cigarettes”).
Oh, and while I'm here, I'll recommend Laura Cantrell ("Kitty Wells' Dresses") and Lydia Loveless ("Steve Earle") and heartily second Caitlin Rose ("Shanghai Cigarettes").
I also heard Merry Go Round, experienced a sense of awe and enlightenment, and peeled out of my car as soon as I reached the drive way to get inside and figure out who had sung it. I had forgotten about the gloriousness of youtubing her and her music. I am comforted to know that there are people out there who will write all my feelings and thoughts down without me having to use my own brain power. Going to go listen to her again and enjoy.
I didn’t know that she wrote Mama’s Broken Heart but that makes so much sense. I had exactly the same reaction to it as you had to Merry Go Round–listening to 92.5, to a bunch of self satisfied dudes singing about their girls and friends and how great country life is, and then the song changes and someone’s singing about being angry and out of control and not being willing to hide it, with a chorus of hilariously familiar admonitions she was ignoring. Real breath of fresh air.