My Best Friend Whom I've Never Met

Kacey Musgraves is an American country music songwriter-turned-singer from Texas. She is considered a country traditionalist, writing her own songs and playing her own instruments, but with a wild and liberal twist. But above all, she is a true language artist.

Her stouthearted use of figurative language in her songwriting – the quick puns, cutting metaphors and illustrative dramatic ironies – has a way of sticking to the listener like (insert simile here). Hours after listening to her work, I find myself not mindlessly humming the tunes, but pondering her intricate idioms like I will soon be tested on them. It is this unstated ability to inspire listeners to think for themselves, as opposed to just reciting lyrics thoughtlessly, that makes Musgraves not a performer, but a writer – an artist.

Musgraves, herself, admits that her favorite subject in school was creative writing. Only 24 years old (barely older than me), she writes with the wisdom of someone with many more trips around the sun. In her poetry, I can see myself checking my reflection for the twentieth time before my first day of high school, sitting in the back of a limousine on prom night, wondering how the hell my parents are satisfied with their lives, recognizing how differently my sister’s life turned out from mine – I see my experiences, my family, and myself. In her intricate web of words, I find rationality and analysis of the choices I make and my life’s path not laid in concrete, but being constructed daily with my conscious choices.

My highest praise of Musgraves comes from a place of accessibility. Today’s young performers are almost exclusively cross-over artists (or as I refer to them, sell-outs.)Amongst the collection of twenty-something performers, pickings are slim – few qualify as true artists, who write their own music, and even fewer retain their original identity when they reach success, often abandoning their own writings for more agreeable chart-toppers.

However, I feel comforted and assured to say that in an industry of singing the “right” songs, Musgraves takes a hard left. Her lyrics are dauntless, tackling the topics of sexuality, drugs, personal identity and everything that goes with being twenty-something in a single idiom – “Follow your Arrow.”