Kacey Musgraves feels a bit differently about her Grammy-winning album Golden Hour after divorcing the man that inspired her magical love songs.
The performer tells Crack Magazine that she's "grappling" with the fact that she's "always going to have to sing Golden Hour for the rest of my life," even after divorcing her muse, Ruston Kelly, whom she doesn't explicitly name.
"I could choose to be an asshole to my fans and not sing it, but I don't wanna do that to people who come dying to hear a song that they love," she explains. "It's about finding a balance between giving someone the show that they want and respecting my heart too... and what I'm handling."
Not that it won't be difficult. She says, "I may have to disassociate a little bit when I'm singing the Golden Hour stuff."
But Kacey's also aware that she will "find new meaning in those songs." After all, she was in love with Ruston and knows "the magic and the feelings of that time don't have to die with that relationship."
And there will be a new album to sing about too. This time, it's styled as a tragedy, with Kacey's co-producer, Daniel Tashian, describing one song as a "Latin-inflected ballad about resigning from a relationship and accepting fate without bitterness."
Kacey admits it's a total 180 from Golden Hour, joking, "Well, here I come with a post-divorce album, bursting the f--king bubble."
This insightful look at her own music came from taking psychedelic mushrooms. As she tells the A Slight Change of Plans podcast, the drug trip resulted in a "massive explosion of creativity" and inspired the concept of her latest album.
She recalls how listening to a curated playlist during the high helped her channel those same sensations even after the drug's effects had worn off. "The next day after the thing, I was laying on my bed listening to this playlist and [the composer] Bach came on and it was this sorrowful tragic number. And the word tragedy popped in my head," Kacey explains. "It was like, 'Boom, tragedy," and then I was like, 'Wait, what if the new album is formulated like a modern tragedy?'"
She continues, "I've been through a tragedy, and so has America. From there, it was off the rails."
Kacey even gives a preview of the album, sharing that it's three acts, with five songs for each act. The artist, who is now dating again, reveals "Star-Crossed," "If I Was an Angel" and "Camera Roll" are the titles of three new songs. What's more is Kacey sings a small part of the latter two titles.
To hear Kacey's preview of the songs, tune into Dr. Maya Shankar's podcast A Slight Change of Plans.