‘Same Trailer, Different Park’ Crashes the Country Music Boy’s Club
When Texas-raised singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves released her debut single in 2013, country music was a man’s man’s man’s world. “Cruise” by Florida Georgia Line was the major hit the year before, bringing a wave of bro-country copy-cats along with it. All of country music radio was a cliché: trucks, boots, girls, beer, anything kind of stereotype you can associate with country music had become fully embraces by both the business of country music and its fans. These kind of songs were going No.1, winning awards and being pushed as the representation of the genre to the rest of the music world. This was also the time I began to fall head over heels in love with country music. But I never took to bro-country; my path to country music was led by the Dixie Chicks, Dolly Parton and Miranda Lambert and their feminist version of country music. That was MY country music, but everyone else’s country music consisted of songs that portrayed women as nothing more than arm candy. But then came Kacey Musgraves, marching in with her fringe, boots and cacti. In a sea of thinly-veiled sexist songs and bros with cowboy hats and baseball caps emerged Musgraves, a millennial who both wrote about topics people her age could connect to but still sounded like a traditional country artist.