Kacey Musgraves - "Blowin' Smoke"

Great choice, and I hope that radio can latch onto her well enough for "Follow Your Arrow" to see a release.

Great choice, this is one of my favourites from the new album. When I first heard it I thought it was a natural choice for a radio single.

Only listened through the album on NPR twice and I liked this one and it seemed to me like one of the better fits for radio because it has a little tempo to it.

I will say though that I'm not quite feeling this album yet after those two preliminary listens. I think part of my problem was with the production: some of the songs seem overproduced imo. The lyrics and vocals are solid, so that's reassuring.

I actually wish a couple of the songs on the album were a little MORE produced; it is pretty mellow and minimally produced, IMO and I would enjoy a 'noisy' song or two. But I'll have to listen to it again when I am in the mood since it seems an album best enjoyed when one has time to really listen.

Will definitely buy the album. And Blowing Smoke should be a good single.

I can see what you're saying but to me the production is just fine but that's what we have opinions for :)

One of my favorite songs off the album is "Keep It To Yourself." (Apart from Follow Your Arrow obviously) so I hope it gets a release. This didn't click with me as much as MGR, FYA and KITY did but it's not bad at all. I'm sure it'll grow on me.

I am probably one of the biggest Kacey fans around, but I think I'm the only one who just doesn't get this. I LOVE this song, but it doesn't strike me as a radio single whatsoever. And it looks like I'm pretty much the only person who thinks that. I think that she should've gone with Silver Lining or Step Off if they weren't going to do Follow Your Arrow.

I definitely still love this song, but I don't know how radio will react to it. It just doesn't strike me as a radio-sounding song!

^ I don't know why you think they're teenagers. They seem like middle-aged women to me. One of them has a child who's about to graduate from college. The narrator sounds tired; she's no teenager.

I'm not sure that really matters. What I like about this song is that it goes back to a long country tradition (that has been pretty much abandoned) of songs about people who are really flawed. Instead of always having the narrator be the good man or woman, country music has songs about not-so-good people. I wish those days were back, so I support this song.

I don't think the songwriter is endorsing the narrator's view of the world. If I did, I wouldn't like it too much.

I feel both ways when I listen to Musgraves' songs. I don't think they're really good when you compare them to the work of first-rate songwriters like Rodney Crowell, Leslie Satcher, or Darrell Scott. But when you compare her songs to most of what's on the radio, they're so clearly superior that I can't help but root for her. Too bad Arrow was too much of a risk, because that one, unlike most of her songs, is really good.

^ May be seen? That's because it is a capitulation. As long as we're celebrating Musgraves for introducing a note of reality into her lyrical narrative, let's keep the reality going.

I was watching a tearful ex-legislator from Minnesota on the TV news talking about her decision several years ago to cast an expedient vote for DOMA, thus against same-sex marriage. She said that she justified it by telling herself that in order to cast meaningful votes later on, she had to be "in the game." In other words, she had to vote against her conscience then in order to be in a good position to sell out again later. Well, in my words, anyway.

I think that's the rationale here. She's got a terrific song (Arrow) with straightforward and good-humored lyrics, full of life and power. But she faces possible resistance of the same sort the Dixie Chicks encountered from the big corporate media conglomerates. (And that's true despite the evident point that the lyrics of Arrow refer to the lesbian "preference" in a way that is not central to the song, and they do it lightly, without depth. "If that's what you're into"? Please.) Anyway, the song is light-hearted and feels very young, from the moment she plays with saying "whore" and veers off into something safer (with a hint that there's more to it). It's no wonder that her label is nervous, it wouldn't be surprising if she wanted to be "in the game" and not jeopardize the success she's worked so hard to be on the brink of.

But I don't see why we can't call it what it is. Every time I hear Blowin' Smoke on the car radio, I know I'll be thinking about Arrow. I'm not saying Musgraves alone is at fault here, but this is really too bad. And I'm still rooting for her, even though a big question mark hovers over this choice of single. When Paisley sent Whiskey Lullaby to radio -- and he was a much bigger star than Musgraves at the time that decision was made, so the situation isn't comparable -- he understood it wasn't an endorsement of suicide and he didn't worry about people misinterpreting the song. It wasn't his job to protect people from misreading. And it was a great single, just as Arrow would have been.

This song sounds really good to me! I don't go deep like all you guys here. When I hear a song and it clicks with me from the get go, then that's all I care about. I hope radio plays this song. I'm thinking of buying this album cause I really enjoyed MGR and I like this too. My kind of music so far!

That's a great point, and I'm chagrined to say I hadn't thought about Kacey in those terms until I read your post. I was consumed with thinking about Kacey's perspective as young and "millenial" because of her wry detachment, her rejection of outside judgment, and her interest in individual failings like inaction. I've said before that I thought the key to moving traditional country back into mainstream fashion was for someone to come along with a contemporary perspective on classic country themes, with a classic country sound. I thought Brandi Carlile's "Same Ol' You" (which Miranda covers on her current album) was a good example of that, and I had started to think of Kacey in those terms, as well. Except, of course, that having streamed her album in full, it isn't anywhere near as steeped in traditional country sounds as I had expected. Which makes it an especially good time for me to consider your point of view.

Keeping in mind that in my life I've been able to take gender-based workplace and social equality for granted for the most part (thanks to generations past), I hadn't thought of "Follow Your Arrow" as being directly addressed to women. But you would be right to point out that the term "whore" is generally addressed to women, and weight issues tend to be associated with women, as well. On the other hand, I had just assumed that the "kiss lots of boys/or kiss lots of girls if that's what you're into" was addressed equally to males and females. In fact, what I like about those lines is that how the second line opens up the audience for the first. It didn't make sense to me to primarily target that particular message to one gender (after all, it's not as if males who wish to "kiss lots of boys" escape judgment). The issues of drinking and churchgoing didn't seem gender-specific, either.

That said, you are absolutely right that "Blowin' Smoke" names women and women only. That makes me wish that the characters had high-level managerial positions instead of being staff at a diner and/or were dissatisfied wives/girlfriends plotting their escape from relationships with overgrown frat boys. But it does count as progress that women are portrayed as harboring dreams of escaping life's drudgery, with one even realizing such a dream. It's nowhere near "He Thinks He'll Keep Her," but it is something.

I'm not sure how consciously Kacey Musgraves is addressing the specific concerns of women, but it seems clear that she is interested in rejecting certain labels attached to women who don't behave as the Mama in "Mama's Broken Heart" believes they should. And she has made it clear that she wants to test the limits of what females (and maybe people in general) are allowed to say, at least if this Washington Post interview is any indication:The article goes on to address the irony of this in light of the fact that Kacey cowrote "Mama's Broken Heart," as well as her desire for "Follow Your Arrow" to be the second single from her debut album. And this New York Times feature suggests that she hasn't yet given up on "Follow Your Arrow" as an eventual single.

So I am on board with Kacey as a fresh writing voice, and eager to see how she grows over the years, whether in the mainstream country world or not. Her album, as pop savvy as it is, has real potential for connecting to the mainstream country audience, and I think "Blowin' Smoke" will be a strong gateway single.

Thanks for the kind words. I think I need to clarify what I wrote a bit, but before I do, I wanted to recommend the article in today's New York Times Magazine about Kacey. Perhaps you did that in your last paragraph, dudley, but I couldn't make your link work so I don't know. In any event, it's a thoughtful and sympathetic article.

Kacey comes across as (appropriately) calculating, but at the same time young and a bit ingenuous. I think I was more or less right the way I pictured the battle over what song to release, but it was nice to see that there is still a world (probably in a parallel universe, but still...) in which Arrow might be released.

So let me drift back to the female-centric version of the world that Kacey inhabits and writes about. It's not that "whore" is a word nearly always reserved for women, although that's true. Nor is it that the "kiss lots of boys/girls" is a women's issue -- obviously that one crosses gender lines. It's the assumption that she's singing primarily to, and for, women listeners.

Context: there are a thousand songs sung by men in which they imagine their listeners all have wives. And that's how they write it. "Listeners, don't make the mistake I have made, treat your wife right." But their women listeners (at least until recently) never had wives. The singers just casually assumed their listeners were men, presumably without malice (I'll make that friendly assumption) and based more on the world they inhabit. Kacey makes the assumption that if you're listening to her, you're a woman.

And thus the "kiss lots of boys" preceding the accepting line about "what you're into" is there because Kacey's automatically, and casually, and without malice, assuming that her listeners are women. She makes the opposite assumption than the traditional one. And I am dazzled by it. She isn't the first, of course. I imagine she's listened to a fair amount of Loretta. But in the world of country radio, the other women singers now are not exactly taking this viewpoint. I'll give you Miranda's Gunpowder and Lead, but still, it's not there much if it's there at all.

I do think Kacey is drawn to "women's issues," an expression I don't like too well, but let that go. I can see that clearly in Smoke. (By the way, I don't think she's ready to write about the boardroom and the glass ceiling. She'll do it when she's ready.) I wouldn't want to take her issues away from her. But I am mostly just thinking of how she so easily grants herself permission to address her women listeners first. It's automatic.

I like that she looks up to John Prine. (She has good taste in songwriting heros but I still don't think she's in that league as a writer. Add Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash to her list, please.) And I thought the article was really good, touching on the reaction to Beer With Jesus, the Dixie Chicks, the new demographic listening to country radio -- just a good solid piece of journalism. I hope the link works for the rest of you.

The primary demographic is indeed female, but we get some confusion because in practice it's a bunch of men deciding what women think and what women would like to hear. And those men have a fairly narrow set of acceptable ideas, I'm sorry to say. (I'm a man too but I prefer a wider set of possible viewpoints -- I don't mind the prevailing but limited perspectives being present, I just think there's a lot more out there. Mary-Chapin, Dixie Chicks, I remember your songs.)

The last thing I want to do is set off the Carrie fans and change the topic, and I swear I am not interested in Carrie-bashing. But I think her radio hits have been very much within the confines of what the men who run the industry find acceptable. The whole "woman-wronged" vengeance song is allowable because those guys find it sexy, not because it's some kind of stand for female emancipation. (Again, my opinion only.)

^Holy smoke!