Kacey Musgraves Reveals Controversial New Single

Kacey Musgraves is pushing the envelope for country music radio with her newest single, ‘Follow Your Arrow.’

Examiner refers to the new single as a “gay rights anthem,” pointing out that Musgraves asked the crowd at a recent concert in New York, “Where my gays at?” before launching into the song.

The single is off of Musgraves' debut studio album, 'Same Trailer, Different Park,' and while it contains the lyrics, “Kiss lots of boys / Or kiss lots of girls / If that’s something you’re into,” the overall message is about more than same-sex rights.

“I’m kind of a big believer in people just doing whatever the hell they want to do,” Musgraves said to the applauding crowd at her Country Radio Seminar performance in February. “Because I feel like society’s probably going to have an opinion either way. And that’s what this is about.”

The song also includes lyrics about drinking, premarital sex and smoking a joint (or not, if that’s not your thing), topics which may be difficult for some radio stations used to being able to quiet uncomfortable language in the songs they air. But censoring ‘Follow Your Arrow’ would completely change the message of the song -- while potentially proving Musgraves’ point.

“At first, I was like, ‘There’s going to be backlash,’” Musgraves told The Boot in April. “I know a lot of people don’t really agree with those things, especially in the South. But there’s actually a lot less criticism towards that song than I imagined. I’ll play it at shows where there’s a huge age range of people and even the older people are getting into it. More than anything, even if they don’t agree with the girls kissing girls thing or even the drug reference, I would hope that they would agree that no matter what, we all should be able to love who we want to love and live how we want to live.”

Musgraves is following her own arrow by performing and releasing songs that she believes in, and her risks are paying off. She has six nominations in this year’s CMA Awards, including Album of the Year, Single, Song, Female Vocalist and New Artist of the Year. The awards will take place Wednesday, Nov. 6 in Nashville.