9 Things to Know About Kacey Musgraves

Kacey Musgraves celebrates her 31st birthday on Wednesday, Aug. 21, and knowing Musgraves, she’ll surely be celebrating her milestone moment in spectacularly sparkly fashion.

The singer burst onto the country scene in 2012 with her debut single, “Merry Go ‘Round,” followed by her debut album Same Trailer, Different Park. In 2015, she followed that with Pageant Material, and in 2018 released her third album, Golden Hour, which instantly earned critical acclaim. Last year, she won the CMA Award for Album of the year and this year, she won four Grammy Awards for the project as well as the ACM Awards for Album of the Year and Female Vocalist of the Year. She recently debuted an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and is two months away from concluding her long-running Oh, What a World Tour.

Read on to learn more about the sequin-loving singer.

She appeared on the TV show ‘Nashville Star’

The Texas native appeared on the country music competition show in 2007, ultimately coming in seventh place. Musgraves was 18 when she competed on Season 5 and told Yahoo! Music that she was still learning who she was as an artist.

“It’s probably a good thing that people don’t remember me from that time period,” she said. “I was very young and figuring myself out musically and personally. It was a great platform to get myself kind of accustomed to being in the industry and seeing what it was like being away from my tiny little hometown in Texas.”

Other notable names to appear on the show include Chris Young and Miranda Lambert — Young won the show’s fourth season, and Lambert placed third during the inaugural batch of episodes.

She met her now-husband, Ruston Kelly, at the Bluebird Cafe

Musgraves told Hits Daily Double that meeting her husband was a complete coincidence.

“I decided to go to the Bluebird one night for a writers’ round, which I never do, because it’s so touristy,” she said. “I had a friend who was playing it, and I thought, ‘Well…’ I didn’t go with anyone, and I was sitting by myself at a table. Ruston played his first song, and I was just stunned by everything in it — the words, the melody, what he was saying. I was just sitting at this table, crying. When it was over, I went up and introduced myself. I said, ‘Hey, I don’t really ever do this, but here’s my number; I really wanna write with you.’”

The day they were scheduled to write, they ended up talking for hours instead, and the rest was history.

Her favorite junk foods are gummy bears and salt and vinegar chips

Much like the rest of us, Musgraves enjoys indulging in a bit of junk food, with the singer naming gummy bears and salt and vinegar chips as two of her favorite options while speaking to iHeartRadio in 2013.

“For some reason, like on the bus, I have to have both of those things,” she said. “It’s terrible.”

In addition to her favorite snacks, the singer shared that her favorite show at the time was Breaking Bad, her favorite city is Paris and her favorite hometown hangout is her parents’ back porch.

She performed at the 2002 Winter Olympics

Back in 2002, Musgraves was a teenage yodeling champion who performed on the Today show during the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, according to WVFest.com, via One Country.

According to the site, Musgraves was named Yodeler of the Year at the 2002 Will Rogers Cowboy Awards, she won the International Youth Yodeling Championship in Tucson, Arizona in 2001 and won the Patsy Montana National Yodeling Championship in 2002.

Though the Internet seems to be fairly devoid of any mention of Musgraves’ yodeling past, this video still exists. 

Before marrying Kelly, she dated Misa Arriaga, who was in her band

Arriaga was Musgraves’ former guitarist, and the pair dated while Arriaga was a part of Musgraves’ band. After their split, Musgraves met Kelly.

“It was the last thing I’d expected. I wasn’t gonna date,” she told Hits Daily Double. “I lived with this fear [this person] is gonna break up with me all the time, or walking on eggshells. If you stay in it, it wears you down and makes you this thing that you’re not, trying to be what someone tells you is right. It leaves you in a shambles, and I feel like for many years I have not really understood what love is. I built walls I didn’t know I was building, and I was in a place I didn’t understand.”

She has a three-legged dog named Pearl

Musgraves’ pup, Pearl, was hit near the singer’s home and had to have one of her legs amputated, but is still just as energetic as ever.

“She’s a little rescue… she’s, I think, kind of a Jack Russell mix,” the singer told iHeartRadio. “She’s all white and has one brown spot, and she’s a little human soul, I feel like.”

Her grandmother was her first booking agent

Musgraves began performing in public in her native Golden, Texas when she was around eight years old, and her career was originally a family affair and still is, to an extent.

“My grandma was my booking agent for a second,” she told ABC News. “Everyone had a hand in every little thing. My sister has been my photographer since day one… my parents in their little print shop would print up head shots and merch for me and load it up in my grandma’s minivan.”

If she wasn’t a musician she would have been a make-up artist

Musgraves’ makeup is always flawless, and the singer has even said that she would have chosen the art as a career had she not been a singer.

“If I wasn’t a singer, I think I’d be a makeup artist,” she told Self in 2013 before going on to share an arsenal of beauty tips.

Her favorite drink is red wine or grapefruit vodka

In 2013, she named red wine and grapefruit vodka as her drinks of choice while speaking to iHeartRadio.

In 2015, though, she told Rolling Stone that she’s “been really into gin and tonics lately.”

She also shared her hangover cure in December, naming coconut water as the key.

“Coconut water is a major help with hangovers and also, a lot of times we go and eat Vietnamese fuh,” she said. “That, sleep, Tylenol, coconut water and just water, in general. And when you’re drinking, have your alcohol, drink a little bit of water, drink some more alcohol, drink some water.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Steve Jennings