walking upstream…
Kacey Musgraves
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗Kacey Musgraves
sourcesWikipedia · PBS NewsHour — What country star Kacey Musgraves listened to growing up (childhood, musical roots) · Billboard — Kacey Musgraves Talks New Music, Ultimate Songwriter Dolly Parton & Grammys · Rolling Stone — Kacey Musgraves Shares Her Icons and Influences (Parton's closet, Sade's Lovers Rock) · Rolling Stone — Kacey Musgraves · Rolling Stone — Country, Pop Stars Unite to Honor Dolly Parton at Warm MusiCares Tribute (the 2019 "Here You Come Again" duet) · Rolling Stone — Kacey Musgraves Remembers Loretta Lynn With 'Coal Miner's Daughter' at the 2023 Grammys
Kacey Musgraves grew up in Golden, Texas, population barely 200, singing yodel-championship harmonies and old-school country in a kids' western band before she was a teenager, cutting an independent album at 13 that her grandmother booked on the Texas Opry circuit. She carried that plainspoken, unhurried delivery into Nashville, where Same Trailer Different Park (2013) won a Grammy on small-town satire and sly wit, and Golden Hour (2018) swept Album of the Year by folding disco shimmer and psychedelic pop into the same frame — what she called "galactic country." The thread running through both is a refusal to separate glamour from substance, learned early from the women she grew up singing along to.
the sound in question
2013
Follow Your ArrowKacey Musgraves
walk the tributaries ↓
Dolly Parton1970s–80s · Country / Country pop / Bluegrass
Ask Musgraves for her biggest influences and Parton comes first, every time. "Two of my biggest influences would be Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, not just because of their remarkable appearances but because of the substance that they infused into their songs," she told PopCulture.com backstage at the 2019 ACM Awards. "I don't take that lightly that they paved the pathway for me." It's not just admiration — Parton got her into the closet, literally, letting Musgraves try on decades of her stage wardrobe in 2015, and Musgraves has called her the "ultimate songwriter," the model for pairing glamour with unapologetic substance.
listen: upstream & heresource: PopCulture.com — Kacey Musgraves Opens up About Influence of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton (Parton and Lynn as her two biggest influences) ↗
1977
Here You Come AgainDolly Parton
2019
Here You Come Again (live, MusiCares Person of the Year tribute to Dolly Parton, with Katy Perry)Kacey Musgraves
listen forOn February 8, 2019, Musgraves and Katy Perry sang "Here You Come Again" together at Parton's MusiCares gala, dressed to match the honoree's own sparkle. Set Parton's 1977 studio original beside that performance and the inheritance is in the phrasing: Parton rides just behind the beat, turning a bouncy pop-country hook into something wry and unhurried rather than desperate — the same laid-back confidence that carries Musgraves through the deadpan punchlines of her own catalog.
Loretta Lynn1970s · Honky-tonk / Country / Traditional country
Musgraves names Lynn in the same breath as Parton as one of her two biggest influences, but what she keeps returning to is Lynn's nerve. "She was banned from radio stations at one point because she was writing songs about birth control and things that were kind of taboo at the time," Musgraves told Stereogum in 2018 — the direct line she draws to her own willingness to write about weed and same-sex love on country radio. When Lynn died in 2022, Musgraves sang "Coal Miner's Daughter" at the Grammys' In Memoriam segment barefoot in a red gown, strumming Lynn's own Epiphone guitar, her name still inlaid on the neck.
listen: upstream & heresource: PopCulture.com — Kacey Musgraves Opens up About Influence of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton (Parton and Lynn as her two biggest influences) ↗
1970
Coal Miner's DaughterLoretta Lynn
2023
Coal Miner's Daughter (live, 2023 Grammys In Memoriam tribute to Loretta Lynn)Kacey Musgraves
listen forLynn's 1970 studio recording of "Coal Miner's Daughter" tells her own hard-scrabble childhood plainly, guitar and voice doing the work without ornament. Musgraves' 2023 Grammy tribute keeps that same unadorned directness — no vocal runs, no reinvention, just the melody and the story carried straight through, the closest her catalog comes to performing exactly the kind of unvarnished testimony Lynn made a career of.
Sade1980s · Smooth jazz / Soul / Sophisti-pop
Sade's album Lovers Rock was, by Musgraves' own account, "a frequent soundtrack" in her childhood home, and the idea stuck with her into the making of Golden Hour. "I love Sade, I grew up listening to her," she told Stereogum in 2018. "I was kinda thinking, 'Man what would it sound like if Sade made a country album?' There has to be a world where sonically, this can all make sense, you know?" It's a thought experiment rather than a specific song borrowed, but it's the one she reached for to describe the record's entire sonic ambition.
listen: upstream & heresource: Stereogum — Kacey Musgraves Is A Wild Thing (Parton, Lynn, and Sade quotes; Golden Hour thought experiment) ↗
1984
Smooth OperatorSade
2018
Golden HourKacey Musgraves
listen forSade's "Smooth Operator" moves at a cool, unhurried pace, letting a spare bassline and Sade Adu's restrained, almost spoken-close vocal carry the song rather than a big chorus. "Golden Hour," the title track Musgraves built her thought experiment toward, borrows that same patience — a slow, breathing tempo and a vocal that stays low and conversational instead of reaching for a hook, country steel guitar standing in for Sade's saxophone.