As the music director of 99.5 WYCD, I listen to a LOT of new music.  I mean, A LOT of new music.  These days there seems to be an over abundance of new female artists like Kristen Kelly, Jana Kramer, Gwen Sebastian (and I love all these girls), and there are others, but this story is about a girl named Kacey Musgraves.  Kacey is a 24 year old singer/songwriter from Texas who first got her start in the Music City on the reality singing competition Nashville Star, when she was just eighteen.   According to her bio, she sang her first song professionally when she was seven, and wrote her first song when she was eight, but I’m sure the things she was writing about then, was a little different than the very real subjects she sings about these days.

Kacey, for being only twenty-four, has a maturity about her that is unmatched in all the music that has come across my desk this year.  If I didn’t promise my life away to her label, Mercury Nashville, that I wouldn’t share the advance tracks she’s recorded for her first album with you, I’d let you hear what I’m talking about.  But clever songs about nervous breakdowns, broken hearts, and cute tunes about traveling to see her long distance lover, with a nice, breezy, bluegrassy feel, and Kacey’s whimsical, yet wistful, downbeat vocal, just takes you away and sets herself apart from so many young artists we’ve been hearing lately.

I talked to Kacey about her debut single, “Merry Go Round”, and she described it as a song “about the Bible Belt mentality in which (she) grew up with in in Texas, and how you don’t want to grow up to be like your parents, but the older you get, you realize that you definitely are.”  That’s essentialy the backstory in a nutshell, but the real story is that Kacey could very well just be the next true “Nashville Star”, and for this country radio personality and music director, she’s a breath of fresh air in a world of very similar sounding music.    I hope you’ll give a listen to Kacey Musgraves’ debut below, and tell me what you think.