Kacey Musgraves - "Follow Your Arrow" (Read 456 times)

[Jhomes87]

Kacey Musgraves - "Follow Your Arrow"

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Songwriters: Kacey Musgraves, Shane McAnally, and Brandy Clark
Impact Date: TBA (Mercury Nashville)
Source: Examiner

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Chart Run (Billboard Country Airplay):

[country65]

I really like this and hope it does well, but I see it as a risky choice. On the other hand regardless of how well it does I think in the long run it will help her career because she is not playing it safe and taking chances. People will take notice and applaud her for not sounding the same as every other female singer. Sometimes with big risks come big rewards. I hope that is the case here.

[Jhomes87]

I sadly don't see this being a big hit at country radio, but hopefully I'm proven wrong. There will be quite a few stations that will be fully supportive of this and will play it a lot, but I imagine that there will be other stations that won't touch it. It's really a shame, too.

However, she has a TON of industry support and critical acclaim. She's not the typical new artist with a #10 hit and another one that fizzled outside the top 20--most artists with similar chart results for their first 2 singles fall of radio's radar pretty quickly (until their next album), but everyone knows who Kacey is now.

While she doesn't necessarily fit in at today's country radio, Kacey has an album that is likely to be a Grammy front-runner, and I think most radio folks know that. So it should be really interesting to watch how this one does and to see how listeners react. This one has been sort of a 'viral' hit (it was selling almost as well on iTunes as "Blowin' Smoke" was during its chart run), and it got a big boost when "The Highway" on SiriusXM began playing this quite some time ago already.

I'm not really sure how I expect this one to perform, due to subject matter that some consider 'touchy' (I don't, for the record) and the fact that her last single stalled in the 20's...but counter that with 6 CMA nods and a bunch of hype and it's clear that the industry likes her a lot. Is there enough there for the gatekeepers at radio to let her through? We'll have to wait and see.

[country65]

I've heard this on the radio a couple of times now and they have not surprisingly dubbed the word joint. Although I understand why they did it, it's a little off putting. Oh well at least it's getting played. Here's hoping it becomes her biggest hit yet!

[Jhomes87]

Kacey and the record label were firmly against making a radio edit of the song, but I could see some stations editing it on their own, unfortunately. I think this is one of the strongest tunes to come out of Nashville in many years, along with Chris Stapleton's debut single. Radio isn't embracing Chris, though. Kacey, however, already scored 1 big hit and another moderate one, and she has the CMA noms and the critical acclaim, so she's already on more radars than Chris is. Hopefully that gives FYA enough of an advantage that it can get out of the gate with a quick start, and then we'll see where it goes from there.