Kacey Musgraves Reflects on Her Divorce: 'Our Season Changed'

Kacey Musgraves doesn't hide her feelings about her divorce from fellow singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly. In fact, in a recent Rolling Stone story on the "Follow Your Arrow" singer, Musgraves explains that the four-year relationship just reached a place where it "simply didn't work out."

Before filing for divorce in the summer of 2020 and finalizing the split in the fall, the couple seemed to have a fairytale romance predicated on their respective careers: Musgraves as the "galactic country" queen, Kelly as a seasoned singer-songwriter in his own right. The two started dating in 2016 after meeting up to write some tunes together, then tied the knot in 2017. But 33 months later, the relationship had run its course.

"It's nothing more than that," Musgraves says of the split. "It's two people who love each other so much, but for so many reasons, it just didn't work. I mean, seasons change. Our season changed."

Musgraves has pointed to the commonplace reason behind the divorce before. In a joint message issued by the couple as they parted ways in July, they also said it "simply just didn't work."

"With heavy but hopeful hearts, we wanted to put our thoughts into the air about what's happening," the statement added. "These kinds of announcements are always met with scrutiny and speculation, and we want to stop that before it even starts. We believe that we were put into each other's lives for a divine reason and have both changed each other infinitely for the better. The love we have for each other goes far beyond the relationship we've shared as husband and wife. It's a soul connection that can never be erased."

Combine that with what was happening outside of the relationship in 2020 — the coronavirus, the social unrest and beyond — and it's no wonder that Musgraves is utilizing the theme of tragedy to guide her upcoming album, the hotly anticipated follow-up to 2018's Golden Hour.

"This last chapter of my life and this whole last year and chapter for our country — at its most simple form, it's a tragedy," Musgraves tells Rolling Stone. "And then I started looking into why portraying a tragedy is actually therapeutic and why it is a form of art that has lasted for centuries. It's because you set the scene, the audience rises to the climax of the problem with you, and then there's resolve."

And even though her union with Kelly was Musgraves' first marriage — before that, she dated her former bandmate Misa Arriaga — the "Space Cowboy" performer adds that she now "questions marriage as a whole, in general. I mean, I was open to it when it came into my life. I embraced it. I just have to tell myself I was brave to follow through" with it.

"But look at Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell," Musgraves remarks of the elder Hollywood couple who, at 37 years together, have never wed. "They're doing something right."