Concert review: Does Kacey Musgraves really deserve arena-star status? Yes. Here’s why.
There are concerts you go to where the artist might put on a flat-out-brilliant show, musically, without ever giving you a real sense of who they are as an individual. And for a lot of music fans, that’s probably just fine.
But then there are artists like Kacey Musgraves.
Go see one of her live performances — for instance, the one she sold out on Thursday night at Spectrum Center in Charlotte — and by the end you’ll feel like you know her pretty well (if you didn’t feel that way already; which most of her loyal fans probably do).
You’ll see that she’s an able storyteller. That she can roll with it when things go awry. That she’s gay-friendly. That she digs astrology. That she can sometimes be a little bit random, sometimes a lot. That she’s got an offbeat and occasionally crude sense of humor, but that her jokes can also be pretty darn adorkable.
Oh, and yeah: that she can sing beautiful renditions of intimate songs in a cavernous setting.
The 36-year-old country-ish/indie-pop-ish singer-songwriter’s concert here was her first in the Queen City in more than five years, since a September 2019 gig at the NC Music Factory’s 5,000-seat amphitheater (then called Charlotte Metro Credit Union, now Skyla Credit Union). Three and a half years before that, Musgraves did a two-night stand at the South End nightclub Amos’.
“My goodness! Hello! Hi! Hey!” she said to the crowd of 15,000, as the ovation it gave her for a sweetly sung version of her 2018 song “Butterflies” subsided. “Um, just a sold-out Charlotte. No big deal.”
It was, though, and she did everything required to make it an arena-worthy one.
Seven musicians (drums, bass, keyboards, three guitars plus a pedal steel) were scattered across the front of her main stage to help create big-room-filling sound, and behind them was a striking set piece in the form of a 30-foot-wide, 5-foot-high ... mound? That’s not quite the right word. But whatever you call it, Musgraves could walk up and onto this thing — which was shaped like the top a perfect sphere, as if the other seven-eighths of it had been buried under the stage — and her tech team could get endlessly creative with the projection-mapped visuals they could beam onto it.
For most of her 20-song, 109-minute-long set, she had a guitar in her hands.
For all of it, she was barefoot; dressed in a high-waisted, pleated gingham skirt and a gingham bow-neck top, both with little rhinestones all over them; and with her long brown hair in a middle-part that pushed it just far enough to the sides of her face to make a perfect frame.
Now, all that said, all things being equal, it seems to me like Musgraves hasn’t ascended to this lofty airspace strictly on the strength of her music’s commercial success. She’s had some modest hits, but she’s only had a piece of one bona-fide hit song, and it was really Zach Bryan’s — that being No. 1 smash “I Remember Anything,” in 2023.
So I really believe a key part of her appeal and her success has to be her personality, which was on full display Thursday night.
Let’s recap how. As I mentioned...
She likes to tell stories. Best in show: “I was living in Austin,” Musgraves said, having just nestled into a low wooden stool for her acoustic mini-set, flanked by two band members, on a B-stage designed to look like it was covered with moss, flowers and grass. “It was just right after high school, and my best friend at the time, he came out to me. We lived together. He was my roommate, and honestly, that made such a massive impression on me. It just opened my whole heart, my whole world. And I could see the courage that it took for him. ... It just opened up my whole world. And then I ended up moving to Nashville. It was 2008. I was 19, about to turn 20, and I ended up making a lot of friends in the queer community. Tons. ...
“I’m from a small-ass-little town in Texas, and honestly, where I’m from, you don’t meet a lot of people that are different. You just don’t. ... Then I started writing for my first record, and I remember when I wrote this song, I turned it in to the label, and they were like, ‘Ummm, yeah. Hell no. This is a big hell no for us. And in fact, it’s probably gonna go down in flames, and this isn’t gonna go well for you.’ And naturally, if you tell me that, it makes me want to do it even more. And I said, ‘No, I’m putting this on because I believe in it, and it’s important to me. And if I’m going to go down in flames for something, I’d rather it be for something I really believe in.’”
The song? “Follow Your Arrow,” the conservative-riling inclusiveness anthem from her 2013 debut studio album “Same Trailer Different Park.”
She can roll with it when things go awry. Perfect example: While she nailed the above story, during the telling of it, little else seemed to be going right. She and those two band members up there with her were all clutching guitars. But hers didn’t seem to be cooperating.
“It is Mercury f------ retrograde,” she ad-libbed, mostly good-naturedly though with a hint of annoyance. The crowd cheered approvingly, clearly missing the astrological reference (and yes, Mercury is in fact in it right now, till mid-month — and people who follow the stars, like Musgraves, believe that mishaps are more likely to occur). “Boooooo!” she tried correcting them. “Booo, we don’t like that.”
After that, she wove her story while her guitar tech tried to fix the issue with her holding onto the instrument, though he eventually had to take it from her. She soldiered through.
Then on the very next song break, as she tried to share some deep reflections about “this constant duality of such beauty and gratitude and then also so much suffering and confusion,” Musgraves had to pause the show for about 10 seconds to alert security that a fan in the GA floor section needed help of some sort. Then she got right on with it again, not missing a beat, questioning the existence of God.
She’s gay-friendly. Well, I mean, you heard the story about her old best friend. But she also sprinkled her show with other nods to a demographic that’s meaningful to her. At one point early on: “I’m so excited to be here tonight. They also told me that Charlotte’s finest gays would be in the crowd, is that right? Oh. There they are. I see them. Yes, I’m glad y’all made it.” At another, during the back half of her set: “You have a cool energy, Charlotte. I really like it. You’re chill, but, like, you’rrrrrre awake. You’re chill, but you came to party. You’re straight, but, like, you’re a little gay. I’m just sayin’. I mean, everyone’s a little gay, right?”
She digs astrology. Cases in point: The “Mercury ... retrograde” comment, along with a huge honkin’ Saturn that dropped down from the rafters to hover over her B stage for the three songs she did back there. Musgraves never mentioned it, never even looked up; but fans know her latest album, “Deeper Well,” is about the singer’s “Saturn return,” representing an astrological event that occurs when the planet returns to the same position in the heavens as it was when she was born.
She can sometimes be a little bit random, sometimes a lot. In addition to all the evidence above? I give you her march back to the main stage from the B stage, which she made with a person dressed as a wolf wearing a headdress. The pair was trailed by someone in a bunny costume, and three others wearing horse heads while carrying colorful banners...
She’s got an offbeat and occasionally crude sense of humor, but her jokes can also be pretty darn adorkable. Exhibit A: Tweaking the final line of her ready-made wedding song “Golden Hour” to “Golden shower.” Then saying — winkingly — as the crowd roared, “I would ask her.” Exhibit B: After watching fans bat around dozens of giant white balloons while she sang her disco-y “High Horse,” Musgraves pointed out: “There’s a deflated one in the middle. That’s sad. It’s all wrinkly. ... A white, wrinkly ball. No one likes that.”
And Exhibit C: The interjections she used (in parentheses below) to liven up penultimate song “Deeper Well” into something that she should absolutely have done when she was musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” earlier this year:
(Alright, y’all) I used to wake and bake (It’s true)
Roll out of bed, hit the gravity bong that I made (It was frickin’ huge)
And start the day
For a while, it got me by (I made it out of a two-liter)
Everything I did seemed better when I was high
Awkwardly f------ high
That last line, normally, is: “I don’t know why.”
Oh, and yeah — all jokes aside: She can sing beautiful renditions of intimate songs in a cavernous setting.
And if she keeps being herself — keeps her personality on display as much as her singing and songwriting — I think Musgraves will be afforded the opportunity to continue doing exactly that.
Probably for years to come.
Kacey Musgraves’ setlist
Main Stage
1. “Cardinal”
2. “Butterflies”
3. “Sway”
4. “Giver / Taker”
5. “Too Good to Be True”
6. “Golden Hour”
7. “Happy & Sad”
8. “Lonely Weekend”
9. “Lonely Millionaire”
B Stage
10. “Follow Your Arrow” (Acoustic)
11. “The Architect” (Acoustic)
12. “Kill Bill” (SZA cover) (with Nickel Creek) (Acoustic)
Main Stage
13. “Jade Green”
14. “Slow Burn”
15. “Space Cowboy”
16. “justified”
17. “Neon Moon” (Brooks & Dunn cover)
18. “High Horse”
19. “Deeper Well”
20. “Rainbow”
