Kacey Musgraves Opens Up About 'Tragedy' Of Divorce From Ruston Kelly: 'I Felt Like I Was Dying Inside'

What comes after the Golden Hour?

Like so many of us, Kacey Musgraves has experienced some major upheaval over the last year. In 2019, she dedicated her Grammy winning album to her then-husband Ruston Kelly, thanking him, as she accepted the Album of the Year award, for inspiring an album full of songs about falling in love.

Now divorced, she reflected on that moment in an interview with Elle, saying:

“If you would’ve told me the night of the Grammys, ‘Hey, in two years, you’re going to be divorced and have a whole ‘nother album written,’ I would have been like, ‘F**k off. No. No way.'”

She told the outlet:

“I felt, in many ways, on top of the world in my career, but in my personal life, I felt like I was dying inside. I was crumbling. I was sad. I felt lonely. I felt broken.”

When she split with her ex in July 2020 after two and a half years of marriage, the country star found herself with a lot of time and space on her hands. She began questioning:

“Why did I make these decisions? How did I get here? How can I prevent myself from getting there again? Why do I keep choosing the same kind of people?”

The self-reflection led to an album about tragedy — something she felt on a personal level with her breakup, but she took a literary approach to it on her new tracks. Inspired by “Shakespearean or Greek tragedy,” the album, tells the story of:

“[Two] people who love each other so much, but they cannot make it work in the physical realm to be together, because it’s just not written in the stars for them. It almost takes the blame off the two people, which is what I like, because it could be easy in a heartbreak to be like, ‘Well, you f**ked up, it’s your fault.’ ‘No, you f**ked up, it’s your fault.’ And it’s like, ‘No, let’s just blame the stars. Let’s just say that we’re not meant to be.'”

Despite the third-person perspective approach, the material is still very much about the 32-year-old’s experience with her divorce. She admitted:

“It’s daunting to put your emotions about something really personal on display. I haven’t spoken much about this chapter, and I don’t feel like I owe that to anyone, but I owe it to myself as a creator to flesh out all these emotions that I’ve felt, and I do that through song. It would be strange if I didn’t acknowledge what happened in my life creatively, but it is scary to be like, ‘I’m about to share my most personal thoughts about me, about this other person, about a union that I had with someone.’ I mean, I’m not a ruthless person. I care about other people’s feelings. So it’s kind of scary.”

Kacey shared:

“I come from a family full of long marriages. My grandparents met when they were in second and third grade, and they’re still together in their eighties. … It was hard to not feel like I was in some ways a failure.”

While the Rainbow singer claimed she “could have coasted for another couple of years, just not paying attention to my feelings or not really dealing with some things,” instead, she did the hard work of letting go and looking within. She stated: