I first fell in love with the music of country singer Kacey Musgraves on a road trip out of Los Angeles to Joshua Tree in 2016, during which the driver—also known as Eliza, one of my best friends from college and an effortlessly upbeat, sun-bleached Cali girl—played the song “My House” over and over.
“Any KOA is A-OK as long as I’m with you,” Musgraves crooned; non-outdoorsy Brooklynite that I am, I furtively googled “KOA” in the passenger seat while Eliza pointed out her favorite camping spots. (For the similarly uninitiated, KOA stands for “Kampgrounds of America,” a large system of privately held campgrounds across the U.S.)
From then on, I was hooked on Musgraves’s alternately bubbly and soulful sound, not to mention her unexpectedly queer-affirming lyrics. For the rest of my time in L.A., I drove around blasting the album Golden Hour in my rapidly declining Subaru, learning to associate Musgraves’s voice with the sights of Venice Beach sunsets and palm trees rustling in the Santa Ana winds.
Ever since I moved to New York a few years ago, I’ve thought of Musgraves’s music merely as a relic of my magical, spectacularly unencumbered L.A. days; hearing the song “Space Cowboy” still makes me think of getting conveyor-belt sushi in Little Tokyo, and I still cry every time Musgraves sings “Guess I’m hangin’ by myself” on the track “Lonely Weekend.”
This holiday season, though, something semi-miraculous happened (if you classify the Spotify algorithm as a miracle, that is). A few weeks ago, one of my fits of semi-manic holiday cheer wound down; I’d wrapped all my presents, decorated Christmas cookies, purchased a chic minimalist menorah, and planned a day of family Zooms for December 25th, yet I still couldn’t shake the sadness of knowing I wouldn’t see most of the people I loved on Chanukah or Christmas.
Thematically enough, it was during that depressing realization that I discovered Musgraves had recorded an entire holiday album in 2016, A Very Kacey Christmas, featuring musical talents like Leon Bridges, The Quebe Sisters, and Willie Nelson. (Truly, if you haven’t heard Musgraves and Nelson duet on “A Willie Nice Christmas,” you have the world’s greatest treat in store.) The album is the perfect mix of pop, country, camp, and classic, and even songs that should be cloying, such as Musgraves’s “I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas,” never fail to put a begrudging smile on my face.