It’s all on display at the newKacey Musgravesexhibit in theCountry Music Hall of Fame and Museum: mementos from her three landmark albums, mannequins adorned withher trendsetting fashionand oodles of awards, including the four pieces of shiny hardwareshe picked up this year at the Grammys.
But the 30-year-old Texas artist admits she told the Nashville museum’s curators that she didn’t think she was ready for her own exhibit when they came calling. “I still feel like I have a lot of things left I want to do,” she said Saturday at a public appearance in conjunction with the exhibit opening. “And in my mind, you know, I’m like, isn’t this something that they do for people when they’re, like, 89 years old?”
Kacey Musgraves.Jason Kempin/Getty
Musgraves finally was persuaded that the museum wanted to shine a spotlight on “a more modern side of country music,” as she put it, and she and her tight-knit family back in the Lone Star State set about scouring closets for artifacts.
The exhibit opened last Tuesday, and when Musgraves got an advance viewing, she unexpectedly found herself in tears.
“I thought that would be a fun thing, and I didn’t know that it would make me emotional,” she said Saturday during the public conversation with museum senior editor Michael Gray in the museum’s CMA Theater. “I was just like such a weirdo. I was just losing it.”
Michael Gray and Kacey Musgraves.Jason Kempin/Getty
A childhood poster.Nancy Kruh
School also sparked no passion, as the detention slips in the exhibit attest — cheeky badges of dishonor that Musgraves made sure went on display.
“I was there to socialize,” she said of her school days. “The reason school existed for me is so I could have a social life, [so] I could talk. … In retrospect, I wish I would’ve paid more attention and cared, but for some reason I just felt so, um … bored.”
Kacey Musgraves’ detention slips.Nancy Kruh
No doubt she also felt destined for a future far different from her classmates’. By age 19, she had landed in Nashville, working to get a foothold as a singer-songwriter. Within a year, she had signed a publishing deal with Warner Chappell Music writing for other artists. She finally found her own sound when she began collaborating with what is now an all-star list of songwriters:Brandy Clark,Shane McAnally,Josh Osborne and Luke Laird.
“I started writing some songs that, for whatever reason, I guess I thought if I was going to be an artist, I would save these for myself,” she said. “I hadn’t really felt that before.”
Handwritten lyrics to “Butterflies”.Nancy Kruh
A recording deal and her debut album,Same Trailer, Different Park,followed in 2013. Though country radio play has sometimes been elusive, Musgraves has still found legions of fans — and she’s often had the last laugh.
“I just thought it was funny,” she said. “But the next year is when [‘Arrow’] won song of the year at the same place that bleeped the word.”
Musgraves’ 2019 Grammys dress and awards.Nancy Kruh
Since taking home the most coveted Grammy, album of the year, in February forGolden Hour,, Musgraves has been enjoying — and adjusting to — an even higher profile across all genres.
“You know, at times it’s daunting,” she said of her celebrity stature. “I’m not somebody who’s ever been like, ‘Yes, fame, awesome!’ … Maintaining my grasp on reality and humanity and normalcy is very important to me. I can’t think of a scarier thing to think about than being detached, you know? … My family, they’d bitch-slap me in two seconds if I was being crazy.”
Kacey Musgraves with grandparents Barbara and Darrell.Jason Kempin/Getty
Musgraves said she’s taking her time to gestate her next recording project, though she revealed she already has “a good handful of songs that I’m really excited about,” including one titled “Good Wife.”
“Just learning a lot about being one of those!” said Musgraves,who married singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly in 2017.
Ruston Kelly and Kacey Musgraves with a pint-sized guest.Jason Kempin/Getty
“Kacey Musgraves: All the Colors,” runs through June 7, 2020, at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Though the exhibit is exhaustive, Musgraves divulged at an opening reception last week that “there is one thing they wouldn’t let me put in here.”
“It’s in my personal collection —Willie Nelsongave it to me,” she said, slyly holding thumb and forefinger just far enough apart to clutch a funny cigarette. “I tried to tell them, it ain’t gonna get more country than that.”
source: people.com
