“I’m the oldest sister, I’m a Leo, and I’m a Texan — I’m destined to be a little bit of an as*hole,” Kacey Musgraves declared Thursday night at Webster Hall during a conversation hosted by American Express for her new album, Deeper Well. “I try to fight it, but it's hard.”
About 500 fans culled from American Express card members attended the intimate event to get a first listen of the album, out today, March 15, and hear Musgraves in conversation with New York Times culture reporter Melena Ryzik. The pair sat among pastoral green moss and talked about the album being recorded largely at famed New York City studio Electric Lady, and how it's about Musgraves wanting to be human and vulnerable and her pursuit to understand herself better in her mid-30s.
In the process, Musgraves gave a sort of mini-songwriting boot camp. AmEx's “Story of My Song” video feature, premiered at the event, showed Musgraves annotating the lyrics to new song “Dinner With Friends" and talking through various changes throughout the lyric writing process. “I'm always trying to beat myself,” she said at one point, to fine-tune a line until it's concise, clear, and powerful in its plainness.
During the interview portion of the night, Musgraves expanded further on her songwriting history — she's been doing this for over a decade — and how important it is for a songwriter to find their unique perspective, not pander to what's on the radio or what one thinks radio people might like. “Every song has already been written,” she said, so all that's left is to make what you want and make it your own.
Musgraves has previously been unafraid to go up against establishment country, and she shared that early hits “Merry Go Round” and “Follow Your Arrow” faced pushback from her label execs at the time.
“I knew going into country music and observing the landscape, okay, there’s going to be some major expectations here. It’s not worth it to me to try to fit into that, I’d just rather not do it all," she said. "[A label] is basically a bank, it doesn't make sense for them to be super risky because they want to be profitable. That's where the art and commerce rub that's been there for f*cking decades happens. The reason we have icons that we think of as icons today are here because they were disruptors at one point. They were thought of as different but they were given a chance. Eventually they set a standard to be the new normal that labels then try to replicate. It's a weird cycle.”
She remembered years ago, back when she was writing Same Trailer Different Park, that the head of her label at the time was trying to get her to agree to a lyric or sound change. She declined.
“He literally said — this is a grown man running a company — 'you know, Kacey, sometimes in business you just gotta do some things you're not proud of,'” she said to gasps from the audience. “I was like, 'Ew. That's literally where you and me could not be more different.' I don't respect that at all.”
She continued with a story about the same person, who told her it was “really risky” to have a line about kissing both boys and girls in “Follow Your Arrow." "He was talking about playing it safe, playing the game and making safe choices for country radio, et cetera, et cetera. I said I don't want to play it safe. He said, ‘I might be a p*ssy but I’m a very successful p*ssy,'" she said. “It was like cue villainous label guy's line. Little did he know I recorded the entire conversation. You never know.”
When the interviewer asked if he was still in his label head position, Musgraves said wryly, “He is kindly retired.” Clearly he didn't have taste: “I played him Golden Hour and he said 'there's no hits here.' But of course when you win the Album of the Year Grammy it's like ‘We did it. Look what we’ve done.'”
Deeper Well is out now, and Musgraves's next move is to prepare her live show — which she said has a goal of bringing intimacy to a big arena — to be not just about showy visuals but to create something authentic with a large audience. Tickets for the tour are on sale now, though, of course with early access for American Express Card Members. (You can find more info on that here.)
In the meantime, you might just catch Kacey Musgraves out and about in New York, where she's taken to feeding rats sushi off her own chopsticks in Greenwich Village. “I'm part of the problem… I felt like it was a Snow White moment, and I took it. It was selfish."
