With “Old Town Road” dominating the cultural conversation for the past
several months (as well as the Billboard charts on which the powers that be
have allowed it to appear), 2019 is a big year for defining, or disregarding,
musical genre boundaries, specifically what is or is not “country”. Saturday
evening’s sold-old show provided two excellent examples.
Kacey Musgraves’s latest album, Golden
Hour, accomplished a rare trifecta by winning top album awards from the Country
Music Association, the Academy of Country Music, and the Recording Academy
(Grammies for both top country album and top album overall). She did this with
virtually no support from country music radio, which I was tempted to point out
to those staffing the WMZQ booth at the concert. To be fair, Lil Nas X probably
had at least as many “elements of today’s country music” in “Old Town Road” as
appear in most of “Golden Hour”; banjos do turn up now and again, and there is
of course “Space Cowboy”, but most folks playing the album would probably file
it under Pop rather than Country, if they felt compelled to make a choice at
all.
Over the course of her 90-minute set, Musgraves did two covers
(including an energetic version of “I Will Survive”), two songs from each of
her first two albums, and all 13 tracks (!) from Golden Hour. (Since it was one of my favorites from last year, I
certainly didn’t complain.) The crowd (many of whom seemed to know all the
words to every song) was justifiably enthusiastic throughout; my favorites were
“Lonely Weekend” (with a particularly psychedelic light show) and “Love Is A
Wild Thing” from Golden Hour, plus “Merry
Go ‘Round” and “Follow Your Arrow” from her debut, Same Trailer, Different Park.
Opening act Yola – black, British, and billed as the “Queen of country
soul” – is if anything even less likely than Musgraves to get airplay on
country radio; even when that genre was at its peak in the 60s, people like Ray
Charles, Solomon Burke, and Joe Simon got airplay on R&B and Top 40
stations but were ignored by country outlets. Labels aside, she did a nice
45-minute set that generated an appreciative reaction from the crowd,
especially with her note-perfect rendition of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. “Walk
Through Fire” and “Shady Grove” were my personal favorites. The “soul” side
mostly dominated, particularly with the smoking ballad “It Ain’t Easier”,
although “Love All Night (Work All Day)” and “What You Do” both had enough
traditional country to them to possibly be hits, if they were recorded by someone
(probably white, alas) with some pre-existing country cred.
