Kacey Musgraves’ CMA Awards Album of the Year Win Fueled by Personal Journey

Kacey Musgraves took home the CMA Award for Album of the Year, for her 2017 Golden Hour record. For Musgraves, the industry recognition was an unexpected validation for the most vulnerable project she has ever released.

“This album is probably the most personal one I would say,” Musgraves shared with PopCulture.com and other media backstage at the CMA Awards. “What I was craving was time. I was really craving time to make it. I took almost a year and a half. Going into the record I was kind of in a bit of confused place. I didn’t really have a lot of self confidence and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do.”

“I just knew that I wanted to change it up and work with different people,” she continued. “Even though I love the person that I worked with before, I wanted to find the thing that made my soul really happy again.”

Musgraves teamed up with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk to co-produce Golden Hour, forming an instant bond that is reflected in the album.

“I had never worked with them before,” revealed Musgraves. “They’re just friends. When we got together it was an instant fit. It was very organic and it felt really good. We wrote ‘Oh, What a world’ together first. I just started imagining this land musically where it was possible to keep these elements of country music that are really intrinsic to my music, like pedal, steel, banjo … I wanted to explore this new frontier for myself with electronic elements. It’s a big mixture of a bunch of different things. It was really important to me to kind of give people a little bit of a hiding place with this record.”

Musgraves performed “Slow Burn” from Golden Hour during the live broadcast, one of the most important tracks on her latest set of tunes.

“I was sitting on my porch one night, last summer, and I might have been in a little bit of an altered state,” Musgraves recalled. “But I had a really open mind and open heart and the words ‘Slow Burn’ came to me. It’s just an ode to the pace of something unfolding in a slow and nice way. I thought to myself ‘The best things in life are a slow burn’ – something that you enjoy the journey of. It doesn’t always have to be about getting to the end the quickest or the fastest.”

“It’s just kind of about enjoying the ride along the way,” she continued. “I can apply that to a lot of different areas of my life with my career, taking my time. Nothing’s a race. Doing something that’s right for you because it feels right. Relationships, friendships. I was even thinking the drink that I have in my hand. Enjoy it. Just don’t knock it back.”

Musgraves is appreciative of the CMA Award, but insists that isn’t why she makes music.

“From the beginning all I’ve wanted to do is just make music that makes me happy and that’s why I do it,” Musgraves maintained. “It makes my soul happy. That’s where the songs come from; it comes from nowhere else. If anyone else likes it, that’s icing on this already amazing cake.All I know to do is to just follow that. I just have to.”

“I can’t sing something or write something or be apart of something if I don’t truly believe it and feel it myself,” she concluded. “You’ll never hear anything from me that isn’t exactly that.”

Photo Credit: Getty images/John Shearer