On Saturday night Kacey Musgraves played a magical set at Stagecoach, one of the most celebrated country music festivals in America. While she didn’t headline the coveted Saturday night slot — that honor was reserved for (male) megastar Keith Urban — she played a honeymoon of a set just before, to an audience of avid country fans packed all the way to the back gates. Because I was fortunate enough to have access to the pit, I was close enough to see the sequins on Kacey’s immaculate, throwback two-piece suit.
There were plenty of people up there with me biding time for Keith Urban, sure; but there were also enclaves and whole swathes of Kacey fans, dying to hit their pink vapes and sing along to the brand new cuts off her fantastic new album, Golden Hour. And for those who weren’t already keyed in to Kacey’s hold on the new country heart, by the end of her stunning hour-long set I heard them exclaiming to each other about her self-assurance and staying power. And that’s just fine with Kacey — but it’s not like she’s unaware of her effect at this point.
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The 29-year-old emerging country star kicked off the set with “Slow Burn,” the searing-yet-gentle opener off Golden Hour, fighting quite a bit of wind off as she did. I’m talking the kind of wind that had mic techs scurrying back onstage right before the band entered to secure errant mic stands with mini-boulders to keep them stable. “Holy shit it’s windy!” Kacey laughed into the mic after her introductory number, sliding in another expletive with the casual grace of a barely-rebel in a notoriously ramrod strict environment. “We were here a couple years ago, can I say… I’m really fucking excited to be back?” she asked. The crowd roared affirmative response — for the most part, country fans don’t really mind the F-bomb. Or weed. Or rampant references to disco, their own claustrophobic set of hypocritical rules, or a little Brooks & Dunn. At least not those of us who live in California.
Dipping generously into both her brand new album and her extensive, beloved back catalog, Kacey filled her set with songs that most prominently display the irreverent, wryly golden bent of her particular songwriting style. At one point toward the beginning of her set, her earpiece went out (I blame the wind again) and Kacey was forced to improvise. Confidently, almost impishly, she led the crowd through an acoustic, lowkey rendition of “Merry Go Round,” one of the first songs off her breakout album, Same Trailer, Different Park, that she ever saw hit the Billboard chart, a notoriously difficult task for women in country.
Of course, this was followed up by a song that earned her accolades in the queer community, “Follow Your Arrow” — for the line “kiss lots of boys / or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into” — and ushered her in as a new kind of country star, one willing to push at the archaic, often maligned conservative values that most icons and prominent industry members of the genre still openly hold (No, not all of them, but the feeling in general remains). That tie-in made this sing-a-long all the more sweet, as the tide turns both on the stage and off of it for fans and participants in the country music community.
I brought a first-time festival goer and big Kacey fan to the fest (see below), and as she pointed out, one of Kacey’s biggest strengths is how utterly herself she seems, both in song and in interviews, on-stage banter, and beyond. There is an effortlessness in her public self that is irreplaceable, stemming from what seems like an utter lack of separation between her at-home self and her performing self; what you see is what you get, in the best way. It can be difficult for artists to share this much of themselves in public, particularly in 2018 when it feels like scrutiny for the smallest misstep is at an all-time high, but Kacey never bats an eye when it comes to sharing the heart of who she is, which she accomplished so entirely on Golden Hour.
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Directly before playing that album’s standout track, “Love Is A Wild Thing,” the singer surreptitiously called out the rampant hate that’s been spewing out of our current political administration and doubled down on her belief that love will always, always win. Her ability to stand for what she believes in, even when faced with a crowd that may or may not believe the same as her, is part of what makes Kacey Musgraves stand out, not just in country but beyond all trace of genre. Because, that same steadfastness goes into everything she writes, and every note she sings. This was just as in her rendition of Golden Hour‘s resident banger, “Velvet Elvis” as it was in an effortless cover of Brooks & Dunn’s beloved “Neon Moon,” a song that actually would’ve slotted quite nicely on Kacey’s latest record.
When she finished out her set right after that, with the disco-heavy, syrupy jam of “High Horse,” it wasn’t just her superfans who looked around, confused, when there was no encore, and no more songs still to come. By the end of her performance, Keith Urban felt like something of an afterthought. But Kacey’s golden hour lingered on, well into the night, basking under the light of the full desert moon.
Golden Hour is out now. Get it here.
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