Last week during the Recording Academy’s annual screening committee meeting, Kacey Musgraves‘ recent album, Star-Crossed, was rejected for Country Album of the Year eligibility at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. The project will remain eligible for the all-genre Album of the Year category.

Musgraves, a six-time Grammy winner, released her fourth studio album Star-Crossed on Sept. 10 through MCA Nashville and Interscope Records. It debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums and No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

After the decision, President of Universal Music Group Nashville Cindy Mabe issued a letter to Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, expressing her disapproval of the decision.  She writes, “Kacey Musgraves is a beacon in a format ready to push back on the ideas that there is more than one way to succeed, there is more than one sound and perspective for what country music is and most importantly who it speaks to.”

Mabe highlights that Musgraves’ blockbuster album Golden Hour won both Album of the Year and Best Country Album, among other country honors, at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. Mabe writes, “Sonically, [Star-Crossed has] more country instrumentation than Golden Hour which won Country Album of the Year in 2019.” Read Mabe’s full letter below.

Final nominees for this year’s awards will be revealed on Tuesday, Nov. 23. The 64th Annual Grammy Awards will be held at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 3, 2022.

Dear Harvey,

I am writing as a follow up to our recent conversation about the determination to exclude Kacey Musgraves’ album Star-Crossed from the Grammy’s country albums category. I am a big believer in the Grammys as an organization and have witnessed the power of its platform to transform artists’ careers and reflect, amplify and change culture. That certainly has happened for Kacey Musgraves over the last seven years with wins in 2014 for Country Album of the Year for Same Trailer Different Park, and then again in 2019 for Golden Hour as well as overall Album of the Year. The Grammy’s have been a destination of artist discovery and for Kacey it’s a place where her musical history was written.

As a prime stakeholder in country music, I would really like to frame what’s happening in our genre right now and help you and the Grammy’s fully understand the importance of Kacey Musgraves to country music and why this decision is so much more than an entry point for an awards show. Taking her out of the country category actually does harm to a format struggling with change and inclusivity overall. For the past several years, the stories around country music have been the stories of country radio and the limitations put on women’s voices or diversity of any kind from our key artists, their perspectives or their sound. The numbers speak and are a matter of public record with women making up only 10 percent of all country airplay. This year alone country music has been mired in the controversy surrounding one of the formats biggest artists, Morgan Wallen, who used a racial slur and grew fans and audience from it. THIS IS NOT ALL THAT WE ARE. Under the surface are the artists that change it all and they are led by the example of Kacey Musgraves.

Kacey Musgraves is a beacon in a format ready to push back on the ideas that there is more than one way to succeed, there is more than one sound and perspective for what country music is and most importantly who it speaks to. While that might not sound radical, I’ll remind you that our world believes you are either on country radio or you aren’t country. Kacey Musgraves is an extreme revolution and if Kacey can create her own path, others can too. She has taken the lead role of lighting the way of success in a format that has been so restricted by rules of who’s allowed in and what they can sing about. Artists like Maren Morris, Brothers Osborne and Mickey Guyton continuously site Kacey’s career path and music as an inspiration for their own success. My own artist Mickey Guyton has struggled for 10 years to be heard. It took the example of watching Kacey create her own path by living out her own truth in country music for Mickey to see what was possible and she followed suit laying out her perspective as a Black woman in America singing country music and re-writing history on your show last year.

Universal Music Group Nashville has launched every major label album Kacey Musgraves has put out. Kacey has always forged her own path. She has stayed true to herself and has never taken a different stance on how she framed this album from the last ones. Sonically, it’s got more country instrumentation than Golden Hour which won Country Album of the Year in 2019. To compare Golden Hour to Star-Crossed, both albums were produced by Ian Fitchuk, Daniel Tashian and Kacey Musgraves. Both albums were mixed by Shawn Everett. On Golden Hour, Ian, Daniel and Kacey wrote 7 of the 13 songs and on Star-Crossed they wrote 11 of the 15. Both albums complete each other with Golden Hour telling the story of falling in love and Star-Crossed telling the conclusion of the breakup. There is no departure in sound from these two projects. This album was consistently classified as country throughout it’s metadata and overall labeling across the DSP accounts and partners. Star-Crossed appeared on every major country playlist of every DSP. It’s being played on SXM The Highway, CMT and was covered by every country media outlet at release. This decision from the country committee to not accept Star-Crossed into the country albums category is very inconsistent and calls into question the other agendas that were part of this decision.

That takes us to the process. The idea that a handful of people including competitors, who would benefit from Kacey not being in the country category, are deciding what is country only exacerbates the problem. The system is broken and sadly not just for Kacey Musgraves but for our entire genre because of how these decisions are made for music’s biggest stage. Building roadblocks for artists who dare to fight the system is so dangerous and against everything I think the Grammy’s stand for. But that’s where we are today.

I haven’t slept all weekend because I’m really sad for our format. I’m sad for fans of our music and the ramifications of how we’ll continue to define success in country music. This short-sided, biased decision will send ripples throughout our format to continue to insure that the message is sent that country music can only be for the limited few that enjoy the same perspective.

Thank you for listening to my concerns.

Sincerely,

Cindy Mabe

Country music renaissance man Gary Allan released his long-awaited new album Ruthless today (June 25).

The 13-track project finds Allan tapping into the eclectic and tender-hearted themes ever-present in his prior releases, and settling into his ‘80s and ‘90s influences. He co-produced Ruthless with some of the minds behind his acclaimed breakout album Smoke Rings In The Dark, Mark Wright and Tony Brown, in addition to Jay Joyce and Greg Droman.

The tracklist, a sequence he has been collecting for eight years, reads like a who’s who of Music Row, with writers Jim Beavers, Sarah Buxton, Rodney Clawson, Nicolle Galyon, Ryan Hurd, Matt Warren, Josh Kear, Hillary Lindsey, Shane McAnally, the late busbee, and more.

Allan recently spoke with MusicRow about Ruthless, making sad songs, and the last 25 years.

MusicRow: The first thing I noticed about Ruthless is there’s a lot of outside cuts, with 12 of the 13 songs. When did you start collecting these songs?

Allan: I have been collecting these songs over the past eight years. The album is an accumulation of three separate projects. One I did with my engineer Greg Droman and my road band–that’s like the “Little Glass of Wine” and “What I Can’t Talk About.” I did another project with Jay Joyce and the label didn’t really hear it. That was right in the middle of the “bro country” thing. We all decided we should just drag our feet until this goes away a little bit. And then the third time we did it was when I felt that ’90s trend coming back. I thought, let’s go get the whole crew that played on the Smoke Rings In The Dark album, and I’ll get Tony Brown and Mark Wright, and that was where these last batch came from.

The cool thing is I had eight years of songs that I had collected and you’re right, it’s probably the least [amount of songs I’ve co-written that] I’ve ever had on the record, but I just tried to be honest with myself. I wore out all those songs if my house, and those were the 13 that spoke to me the most.

“Waste of A Whiskey Drink” is the leading single for the project. What compelled you to this song when you heard it?

It’s tongue-in-cheek, it just made smile. I think we’ve all sat down at a bar with somebody and said, “Man, you don’t want none of that. That’s a waste of a whiskey drink and a big heartache coming if you get involved.”

Speaking on heartache, you have mastered that over the years with some of your biggest songs telling the story of heartache or love gone wrong (see “Watching Airplanes,” “Life Ain’t Always Beautiful,” “Best I Ever Had”). Do you feel like that’s what you’re known for now?

Yeah, that’s all my favorite stuff. I’ve been called the master of misery and there are all kinds of quotes from different magazines about my writing. With “Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain)” I learned from Hillary [Lindsey] how you can write a sad song but still write every line to be positive. But sad songs have always been my favorite stuff. I’ve always loved the “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and the album cuts on records. Even my favorite artists [put out a lot of sad songs.] I have always been blown away that [artists like] Merle Haggard weren’t playing the AT&T Center.

I’ve always viewed myself as like the guy in the bar or part of the bar band because that’s always been my favorite stuff. For instance, “A Little Glass Of Wine,” is an old Jesse Winchester song. I got turned onto him by songwriters Odie Blackmon and Jamie O’Hara. Jamie use to tell me that was his all-time favorite writer and that made me go and buy all of his stuff.

“What I Can’t Talk About” has such a great lyric. “That’s why I sing about what I can’t talk about.” What was your reaction when you heard that hook?

I thought that was my next big single. I cut that eight years ago. When you go in and you cut in the studio, in your head, you have the two or three songs that are the singles. I was so confident that I started cutting songs like “Little Glass Of Wine.” When I turned it in, they were like, “Man, I just think that’s too negative.” In hindsight, that was the beginning of the “bro country” thing. My manager talked to me about this a little bit. He said, “We just didn’t feel like you were going to fit into the current format, so eventually we started just dragging our feet.”

You are a co-writer on “Pretty Damn Close.” Tell me about writing that one.

To me it’s like a George Strait song. That’s all I heard when we were writing it and that’s all I hear still when I listen to it. That “Something about her spinning around with the glitter in her hair,” just feels super ’80s and ’90s. I missed that. I miss writing with guitars. To me, that’s my favorite part about the ’90s sounds is the melodies and I think that’s what we’re lacking most right now.

Why did Ruthless stick out as the track from which you should title this project?

For me, I’m still a little kid looking at the shelf. So I always try to think of what looks cool on the shelf, so “Gary Allan – Ruthless” says “He’s gonna be here no matter what, he’s going to make it through this.”

You’re celebrating the release of Ruthless with a special performance tonight (June 25) at Assembly Hall in Fifth + Broadway. Have you gotten to play much recently now that the pandemic restrictions are lifting?

This will be my fifth show back. We had 462 days between shows, not that I was counting. It feels so good to be back.

It’s been 25 years since your first album Used Heart For Sale. What are some of the biggest things you’ve learned about yourself since then?

Just do what you do. That’s probably the hardest thing about being around for a long time is not to get jaded every time it takes a left turn. Even if you think [what the music industry is doing] sucks, you can’t go, “This sucks.” You have to go, “How do I sit in this?” I had the hardest time with the “bro country” thing, I didn’t like it. I didn’t understand it. But what I learned the most is don’t let other people define what you’re good at, what you’re awesome at, or what you feel good about. Just go do your thing and let the chips fall.