YMMV / Kacey Musgraves

• Anvilicious:
  • "Follow Your Arrow" is definitely not subtle about its message (which is, plain and simple, to be true to yourself and accept other people for who they are).
  • The message of "Biscuits" is that making other people feel worse won't make you feel better, which is true, but is delivered as subtly as a hammer hitting a nail.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Follow Your Arrow" and "Blowin' Smoke" from Same Trailer, Different Park
  • "Biscuits" is the "Follow Your Arrow" of Pageant Material and equally as awesome. "Dime Store Cowgirl" is a candidate too.
• Heartwarming Moments: One particular sentiment from "My House":
  Kacey: Don't matter where we go, I'll never be alone, anywhere beside you is a place that I'll call home.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Golden Hour and specifically "Space Cowboy" hit harder after the divorce between her and Ruston Kelly two years after Golden Hour's release.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: She's popular in Japan despite country music not having a niche there. They like her whimsy and colorful aesthetic. She spent a week promoting Golden Hour there in the spring of 2018 and it has its own Japanese specific special edition. She played a festival there that summer and went back on her tour a few months later. Not even Garth Brooks goes to Japan on tour, let alone three times in a year.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • She is especially popular among LGBT listeners for her progressive lyrics as well as theme of acceptance in her breakout hit "Follow Your Arrow". So much so that she was invited to the GLAAD award (the first country artist in history) and being a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race.
  • Kacey on her part has talked extensively on LGBTQ issues and even include a crossdressing young man for her "Rainbow" music video.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: When "Follow Your Arrow" debuted at the 2013 Country Radio Seminar, it quickly caught controversies for its progressive lyrics, causing it to be blacklisted at country radio. The general public, especially the more tolerant pop and Adult Alternative listeners, caught wind of the controversy and embraced it wholeheartedly, made it debut at #10 on the US Country Songs chart and launching her career as a pop star.
• Periphery Demographic: She’s never quite caught on in a big way with the older, more insular, and conservative country music audience. However, she’s found a niche with the younger and more progressive adult alternative and pop audiences despite the fact that her music would still be classified as country. That being said, she has garnered respect and praise from a rather diverse set of music fans outside her niche, even within a lot of Indie Rock circles. She doesn't really get plays on country radio which, even in the age of streaming, is still how most people find new music. Younger people who mostly stream music have an easier time finding her. She's also not the first female country act to get blacklisted from the radio for speaking her mind to go on to have a big Periphery Demographic see the Dixie Chicks (for their statements about George W. Bush during the Iraq invasion) for a more recent example and Loretta Lynn (for writing about things like the birth control pill in the 70s) for an older one.
• Signature Song: "Merry-go-Round" to country music listeners; "Follow Your Arrow" to the greater public.
• Sophomore Slump: It's generally agreed that 2015's Pageant Material is the weakest of her studio albums. Many fans speculate that this is because she was trying to please country radio by releasing the two weaker but more mainstream singles, resulting in the album not receive any Grammy nomination for the singles.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Back On The Map" is pretty sad:
  Cause I swear I did everything I coulda done,
  but what good is love without the trust?
  • "Blowin' Smoke" is, too, given its theme of wanting to hit greener pastures but not really having the means to do so.
  • "Merry Go 'Round" depicts the toxic lifestyle and tradition of a small town stifles the potential of Kacey and the people around her, causing them to keep looking for distraction from their boredom. What worse is that she seems to resign to this fate with no idea how to change.