
How Kacey Musgraves Changed Country With "Golden Hour"
Season 1 Episode 9 | 9m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
How Kacey Musgraves Changed Country With "Golden Hour"
Kacey Musgraves won the Album of the Year award at the 2019 Grammys, becoming only the 4th country album to ever win that award. Two of the producers of the album, Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, talk to us about how they and Kacey were able to make such a crossover success.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

How Kacey Musgraves Changed Country With "Golden Hour"
Season 1 Episode 9 | 9m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
Kacey Musgraves won the Album of the Year award at the 2019 Grammys, becoming only the 4th country album to ever win that award. Two of the producers of the album, Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, talk to us about how they and Kacey were able to make such a crossover success.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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- Kacey Musgraves won Album of the Year at the 2019 Grammy's for her album Golden Hour, becoming just the fourth country album to ever take home that award.
So, how did she achieve this crossover success and what does it mean for the future of country music?
We're going to talk to the producers of Golden Hour to find out.
♪ Or a billion times ♪ - The way that this album came together with Kacey was just so natural between the three of us, Daniel, my co-producer, and Kacey.
- I didn't have low expectations like no one is gonna like this, but I wasn't like we're gonna just slay at the Grammys.
I never thought that.
- Over the past decade, country music, the genre of Dolly Parton and the Dixie Chicks, has been dominated by male perspectives.
In 2015, a radio consultant suggested country stations shouldn't play too many females if they wanted solid ratings saying, "The lettuce is Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton, "Keith Urban, the tomatoes of of our salad are the females."
The year before that, Maddie and Tae released Girl in a Country Song.
Their lament on the state of females in country music.
♪ Being a girl in a country song ♪ ♪ How in the world did it go so wrong ♪ - So, how does this genre evolve and sound contemporary while keeping it's identity?
Some people argue that it means crossing over into pop.
♪ Women, purely for women ♪ And, others say it means doubling down on tradition.
♪ Heard I was a wild one, acting like a child some ♪ Kacey Musgraves shows that this choice is a false binary by mixing elements of the past and the future throughout Golden Hour.
- In a way, I would argue that a lot of mainstream country is even more overtly pop oriented.
In mainstream country music, the kind of country music that's played on the radio, you hear much more overtly pop elements like drum machines and trap.
- Throughout the album, Kacey Musgraves takes old traditional sounds and makes them sound new by re-contextualizing them.
- You know, I think Kacey had a real clear vision that she wanted to mix those things that she had had on her other albums with some new sounds to bring those worlds together.
- She previously hadn't had a lot of like keyboards on her records, and so it's interesting that even just introducing the piano and some of the synthesizers, and she was really open minded and not afraid to explore that stuff.
- Even one of the most futuristic sounding moments in the album has roots in the past.
Check out the robotic vocoder at the beginning of Kacey Musgraves' song, Oh, What a World.
♪ Oh, what a world, I don't wanna leave ♪ - Now check out country legend Pete Drake in the 1965 country music film Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar.
♪ Whispers, whispers, sweet lady ♪ - The vocoder at the beginning, - That's actually my voice, which is really weird to hear now, like when you hear it in a live concert or something.
It's not unusual for me to hear my drums, or piano or guitar parts that I might have recorded, but it is a bit, it's definitely a different feeling to hear your voice through a vocoder.
- What was that a reference to?
- I think Kacey just had the idea.
She might have referred specifically to Daft Punk, but I don't know.
I think she just kind of identified the vocoder sound as something that can sound extra worldly.
- So while this kind of effect suggests futurism, it's also distinctly retro.
In fact, here's what Kacey Musgraves told GQ about Oh, What a World.
"It's this trippy perspective, the sound where "future meets tradition.
"One thought I had was, what would it sound like "if Imogen Heap made a country album?
"Would it work?
Would it make sense?"
- Maybe no instrument or sound is more associated with country music than pedal steel guitar.
In fact, when George Harrison and Bob Dylan wanted to make country albums, they had help from pedal steel player Pete Drake, the talk box guy.
However, on Golden Hour, the pedal steel guitar is doing something different.
It's used more like a texture, similar to how a post-rock band might use a guitar.
Check out the guitar in this post-rock song by Sigur Ros.
(post-rock melody) And here's how Kacey uses the pedal steel sound in Space Cowboy.
♪ Yeah ♪ - Some bands have experimented with the texture of their instruments to create post-rock.
Is Kacey doing a similar thing with country to make post-country?
- Country music is a big part of her story and her life, and her heart.
She really loves country music.
We weren't making rules, saying we have to make sure this appeals to country, especially because she's never really been embraced by country radio.
- Is that something you guys think about on a regular basis, the identity of where you guys are coming from?
- I think it was more of like, her saying "I really do love the emotion of the pedal steel."
- I think Kacey was like, "Look, we're gonna turn the banjo up, "and we're gonna turn the steel up, "so we're gonna let people know those things "are in there."
And I think she kind of wanted to do that because if you're not mixing genres in a way, it's probably not that interesting.
- Throughout the process, Kacey made sure that the experimentation didn't go too far.
- One thing that we always kind of joked about was that Kacey's just really good, we called her the ax man, - (laughs) - because she was always good at trimming the fat.
- And I think the ax man ended up really doing us a great service, because the ax man gave us a lot of space in music in a way that I think allows people to really lean in to it, and listen to it as opposed to being like "Whoa, what's all this music coming at me?"
(laughs) - So Shawn Everett is credited with dolphin magic.
Can you tell us what dolphin magic is?
- I don't know if it's ever been made public on the song Happy and Sad, there's a transition that goes into the chorus that is this celestial kind of, harp sound.
It's lifted from a particular cartoon.
I think there's the image of a dolphin jumping out of the water as that sound occurs, and we just pulled that.
(celestial melody) - There might be another factor that's playing into the crossover success of Golden Hour.
The rise of the yee-haw agenda.
Starting on the internet as memes in 2017, to finding its viral moment with yodeling kid Mason Ramsey in 2018.
(yodeling) From both Solange and Cardi B wearing cowgirl outfits, to Lil Nas X's Billboard number one Old Town Road, being a cowboy has suddenly become very cool.
This rise of the yee-haw agenda has also opened the doors for people of all different backgrounds to participate in the aesthetic of country western music.
When a fan tweeted this, (typing sounds) Kacey responded with this.
(typing sounds) - Kacey's lyrics open the door even further.
The inclusive messages of songs like her 2013 hit Follow Your Arrow, makes her a perfect ambassador for country music to a wider audience.
♪ Kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls ♪ ♪ If that's something you're into ♪ - So the sudden love for cowboy style may have helped her crossover to success, or she could be part of the reason yee-haw became so popular in the first place.
There aren't many artists that have performed at the Houston Rodeo and appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race.
LA and I are going to write a Golden Hour-inspired song.
Do you have any tips for us?
- Overall, it's a bit reflective and so, you know, just reflect on your life, and get out of your comfort zone a little bit, and see what's out there.
Acoustic instruments, like the acoustic guitar, is pretty much everywhere.
There's not a lot of cymbals!
- [LA] Our job is to do Kacey Musgraves-style country.
- I listened to the album, I made notes on most of the tracks.
Usually the progressions have four chords or five, sometimes just two.
One, six, three, five, or one, six, three, four, I wrote.
- She puts a lot of emphasis on the guitar sound kind of thing, country music does that in general, has a lot of guitar sound.
But, how we-- - How are we gonna, so I have an idea.
- Okay - So, I think we could try at least, pulling off putting in guitar.
I own an acoustic guitar - Okay.
- I can kind of learn basic chords and just strum.
- You have a guitar, and you're gonna teach yourself, you're gonna strum some chords on this guitar?
- Why not?
Hold on, I have, well hold on.
- You're just gonna, just, teach yourself guitar.
- Yeah if you just, okay.
So if you just play (strums chord) just one chord and just strum it here and there.
This is not a good idea right now.
- Country, here we come.
Okay, now here's our Golden Hour-inspired track.
(mellow guitar) (country melody) - We need some help with the vocals, so download our track from our SoundCloud at the link in the description, and sing on it.
And here's a little advice from Daniel Tashian.
- Country music likes a lot of furniture in the song, where other songs talk about feelings, like country music likes a lot of objects.
(chiming)
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