“I see your yee-haw is activated,” says country singer Kacey Musgraves to a full house in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on the last night of her European tour. Even though it was a Tuesday night gig, the yee-haw was indeed activated and the singer from Golden, the area of Texas, told us how proud she was of us for choosing her and her band over U2, who were also playing on November 7th in the 3Arena.
The thing about Musgraves is that she is wicked smart, quick-witted and incredibly charming. Not only does this come through in her lyrics ("I ain't pageant material, I'm always higher than my hair," she sings on 2015's Pageant Material), it shines through when she interacts with the crowd, telling meandering stories and cracking knowing jokes; something she does a lot during the gig.
With her pristine hair, immaculate make-up and mastering her six-inch heels, if we didn’t already have Dolly Parton, Musgraves would be country’s doll but, for now, she’s definitely our VBF.
Riding high on the success of this year's Golden Hour, which sees the singer toy around with disco on the superb High Horse and, prompted by her recent marriage to singer Ruston Kelly, dabble in love songs for the first time, 2018 has been good to Musgraves but she's always been good to us.
Promoted
Golden Hour is her fourth album on a major label but before she signed with Mercury Nashville in 2012, she put out three albums herself but whether she's on a big label or putting in the hours herself, her music has always promoted independence and individuality without sparing fun for fun's sake.
Same Trailer Different Park, her big label debut, came out in 2013 and with Luke Laird and Shane McAnally, two of country's biggest producers, joining Musgraves with production, they created an album that undoes the backwards stereotypes of country music.
Merry Go 'Round, her official debut single, hones in on small-town blues – something she knows all too well hailing from a town with a population of 200 people – and with a sweet melody, its prophecy is all about dead-end doom.
“Mama’s hooked on Mary Kay, brother’s hooked on Mary Jane and Daddy’s hooked on Mary two doors down,” she sings, “Mary Mary quite contrary. We get bored so we get married and just like dust we settle in this town.”
Continuing to go against what's expected of her, her third single Follow Your Arrow is the pro-love, pro-choice, pro-doing what's best for you and it's essentially the Born This Way of country music.
‘Hell of a time’
Her support of LGBT rights has previously had her painted as a rebel but in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2014, she denounced the rebel label, calling it "cheap" because the issues she takes on – like drug use, safe sex and testing the confines of a small town and religion – are not controversial to her. 'Atta girl.
Back in Dublin, she waves a pint of Guinness and hollers that "it's been a hell of a time" here. Bouncing through songs like phonetically satisfying Velvet Elvis, Wonder Woman and a cover of N Sync's 1997 single Tearin' Up My Heart, Musgraves holds the adoring – no – the diehard audience under her spell from start to finish. With a full band kitted out like second-hand car salesmen from the 1970s, with one wearing a diamanté butterfly necklace as a nod to her beautiful love song Butterflies, Musgraves puts on what will no doubt be the musical highlight of the year for so many in the crowd.
