Kacey Musgraves – Same Trailer Different Park

Over the past two year I’ve been reacquainting with country music since my brief departure from it in 2012.  By reacquainting I mean listening to videos on YouTube and looking at the charts. When I started listening to country music again I’m disappointed to say I wasn’t very impressed. I thought “Where’s the country music at?” since all I heard on the radio were acts like Flordia Georgia Line and Luke Bryan. Since I despised bro country (and still do), I thought well at least the ladies of country music are still around. So I gave them a listen. Wasn’t really impressed with them either. At least they weren’t singing about girls, trucks, and beer, right? Well I guess, I mean I didn’t see any depth in the songwriting (especially with Miranda Lambert).  But at least she kept it kind of country unlike Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift. After listening to the “queen of country”‘s atrocity “Red”, I thought “Can you really be country after using dubstep and a helluva lot of electronic elements. Even though she’s never been country to me, she went too far and can no longer call herself a country artist. Despite that, I wondered who was going to be the next “queen of country”. So one day, I looked on the charts and saw a song called “Merry Go Round” by Kacey Musgraves which got to thirteen. So I thought, why not listen to it? It can’t be any worse than bro country.

Now enter Kacey Musgraves. For those of you who don’t know who she is. She was on some show called “Nashville Star” and placed seventh in the fifth season. In 2012 she toured with Lady Antebellum in the UK which probably gave her the power to sign with a major label and release her debut album which sat at #1 on the Billboard Country charts. It’s also interesting to not that her major label debut wasn’t her first album. She’s apparently released three albums independently (none of which I can find).

What this shows is that she’s had time to hone her craft and weave out her amateur mistakes that were on her previous albums. In this album she brings enough confidence and maturity to suggest that she’s a veteran in the industry. Her lyrics have an effortless flow and her instrumentation is very melodic. While this album does have a folk feel on a few tracks, with the stomping choruses and mandolin bits, it’s smoothly integrated into the sound of the album. And while the instrumentation isn’t anything special, it’s simple and reserved and confidence enough to match her songs excellently.

However, the real star of country songs is the writing, and here, Kacey Musgraves knocks it out of the ballpark. There’s so much here she gets right and makes me wonder how the hell did I tolerate crap the Nashville Machine kept pumping out. Mostly because she made it look so easy. There’s a natural flow to her lyrics unlike the amateur style of Taylor Swift. The rhymes aren’t forced, the stanzas are clean, and there isn’t stretching of syllables or cluttered verses -these are simple things to get right and raises the question why the hell does the majority of the country scene keep getting them wrong.

But really that’s just excellent craftsmanship, and all of that doesn’t really mean much if the songs don’t have anything to say. Fortunately, Musgraves as a lot to say. Smuggled into mainstream country music, “Same Trailer Different Park” might be one of the most acidic albums about social expectations and traditional values in rural America I’ve ever heard from a country artist. With songs like “Merry Go Round” which is about the decay of rural America, and “Follow Your Arrow” with it’s socially conscious lyrics talking about smoking pot and homosexuality. Quite frankly, I’m surprised this album got released at all because it takes the traditionalism of Nashville and pummels it with a bat. This album gets a strong 8/10 from me and a very strong recommendation. Look, if you’re looking for some traditional country music that actually has some meaning to it. Get this album!