Kacey Musgraves Reacts After Grammys Rule Her Ineligible

Six-time Grammy-award-winning country superstar Kacey Musgraves is breaking her silence on her latest album being rules as ineligible for the 2022 Grammy season. Musgraves is being left out of the GRAMMY Awards’ best country album category. On Wednesday, Oct. 13, Musgraves shared her thoughts on Twitter. “You can take the girl out of the country (genre), but you can’t take the country out of the girl,” Musgraves captioned the post of a photo of her as a young girl sporting a pink cowboy hat and a smile.

The Recording Academy declared that Musgraves’ Star-Crossed is not eligible in the country category. Instead, the album is eligible for best Pop Vocal Album. 

In a post on her Instagram story, Musgraves shared the same photo and message. She also paid tribute to some country music icons, sharing photos of her with Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Ronnie Milsap, George Strait, Brooks & Dunn, Leann Womack and more. She tagged each artist in the photo and asked them in the captions, “Whatchu think?”

Billboard reports that the decision was not made by the legendary Harvey Mason, who sits at the head of the board. Instead, the decision was made by the Recording Academy’s country screening committee, which is a secret and unnamed group that determines which albums and recordings will be divided into each category annually.

In spite of such, Musgraves has been on a high lately. She performed in the opening SNL season. The performance marked her return to the live sketch comedy series since her last performance in 2018. 

She recently ended her marriage and says the COVID-19 pandemic caused her to take a second look at her relationship. She told Elle Magazine regarding the split: “I come from a family full of long marriages…It was hard to not feel like I was in some ways a failure,” Musgraves said. But she added that “there’s nothing more shameful than staying somewhere where you don’t fit anymore.”