Kacey Musgraves interview: I try to create a world where Daft Punk meets country

Saturday night at the O2 and, in the Greenwich arena’s breezeblock bowels, the evening’s headline artist pads into her dressing room with an apology and a revelation.

“Thanks for waiting!” beams Kacey Musgraves. “Sorry, my Spanx were hard to deal with.”

It’s two hours before showtime. Country music’s rising — or, now, risen — star is a vision in glossy, dyed-black hair, fluffy slippers and a “fantabulous rainbow tassel jumper dress” made by the London “cool girl” behind label Aesthetic Laundry.

“I saw her on Instagram and I messaged her. She’s made a few pieces for me, and I really like supporting small businesses. My parents had a small business for as long as I can remember,” says Musgraves, 29, “a print shop, doing business cards, faxes. I worked there when I was in high school. ‘Printing & Graphics, this is Kacey, how can I help you?’” she chirps. “They agreed unanimously I was their worst f***ing employee ever.”

The swearing, the support-underwear acknowledgement, the fashion-forward psychedelic goth look: Texas-born Musgraves is far from your average Nashville star. Yet here she is, a headlining artist at the annual C2C (Country To Country) festival, an early opportunity for the Grammy-winner to unveil songs from her third album, Golden Hour.

Like too-obvious forbear Taylor Swift, the ambitions of Musgraves — who is playing Wembley Arena this autumn — lie far from the country heartland. But for all its fantastically winning, sweetheart-of-the-rodeo songwriting, Golden Hour also features a disco tune (the “Bee Gees with a bit of a western influence”, High Horse); a co-write with Ed Sheeran collaborator Amy Wadge (Thinking Out Loud), and a tiny bit of vocoder.

“I wondered: is there a world where Daft Punk meets country?” says Musgraves, freshly pedi’d toes waggling in her Seventies slippers. “Where future meets traditionalism? So there’s still pedal steel and banjo and organics but crossed with all this crazy s**t!”

The non-Nashville world is listening, too. Two days from now she’s popping round to Elton John’s house to appear on his Rocket Hour radio show on Beats 1. Then it’s back to the US to prepare for her support slot on Harry Styles’ American arena tour.

Even cooler: given the ever-present conservatism of country music, Musgraves is impressively willing to speak her mind and carve out her own (expanding) corner of the genre. On 2013’s Same Trailer Different Park album this found form in what she proudly calls her “LGBT anthem”, Follow Your Arrow. On 2015’s Pageant Material, her second country charts No 1, Biscuits, encouraged listeners to “smoke your own smoke”.

Now on Golden Hour, her defiant sense of individualism is proclaimed on the song Mother. Musgraves freely admits it was inspired by “micro-dosing on LSD” — and admits this in the press materials issued by her record label.

“That embarrassed the hell out of my mom and grandma,” she notes cheerfully. “But I said, sorry, I have to tell the truth. Psychedelics have been something that I’ve mildly dabbled with… If you’re responsible about it, it can be a positive thing. It’s really opened my heart and mind in a lot of ways.”

Her heart, equally, has been opened by love. Since Pageant Material, Musgraves has married musician Ruston Kelly, their eyes having met over a crowded microphone at a singer-songwriter night in a club. “It’s so Nashville,” she grins of their first encounter two years ago.

That state of bliss explains the profusion of love songs on Golden Hour. Musgraves, true to smart form, is aware of the limitations. “I don’t want people to be like, ‘We get it, you’re married, you’re in love, boring, snoozeville, song number 13…’”

Hence a song influenced by LSD and also High Horse, which takes pokes at “that character everyone knows, whether it’s an ex-boyfriend or a politician”, she says. In terms of the latter, she refuses to name names, possibly in deference to both her red-state roots and to the musical world that continues to form the heart of her audience.

Still, it’s obvious she means the Pussy Grabber-in-Chief when she talks witheringly of the “ugly s**t” that’s going on in American society. Musgraves is more vehement still when discussing how #MeToo might impact on a business that’s still largely patriarchal.

“That’s definitely a mindset that’s around all the time in the music industry,” she agrees. “I’m been lucky never to have experienced a physical degree of that. But comments will be made.

“In country music,” she continues, “there’s a massive extra pressure on females to be more accommodating and more friendly and more flirtatious with radio programmers. And if you’re not, they label you as a bitch and they don’t do anything extra to help you.

“But then all these guy artists roll in, wearing their sunglasses 24/7 and partying all night. It’s not really fair, [because] they do better because of that.”

Musgraves tells a story from the promotional circuit for Same Trailer Different Park. “I was on the radio and I was wearing some short shorts — God forbid I should show my legs; it’s not 1930 — and this radio programmer said: ‘Wow, you have the nicest legs, do you mind if I touch them?’ This is on air!” she exclaims, then laughs. “I’m like, ‘Well, at least you asked!’”

“At least now,” says Musgraves, “people have the balls — or the pussies — to stand up and call people out.”

Golden Hour (MCA Nashville/Decca) is released on Friday