Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 110 Best Albums of the 2010s, representing a varied cross-section of artists, genres, and styles. Click “Next Album” below to explore each album in the list or for easier navigation, view the full introduction & album index here.
KACEY MUSGRAVES | Golden Hour
MCA Nashville (2018)
Selected by Justin Chadwick
Each year, it seems that there’s always that one album that blows people away the moment that they hear it for the first time and immediately transforms them into eager evangelists for the artist and album. Now, it may take some time and some friendly coaxing from their friends and loved ones for them to finally discover the record’s many charms, but once they do, they’re unconditionally, inextricably hooked for good.
Last year, in 2018, and at least in my own experience, that album was unquestionably Kacey Musgraves’ fantastic fourth studio album Golden Hour, an exquisitely crafted, universally relatable paean to the broad spectrum of life and love’s euphoric highs and heart-numbing lows.
Already critically acclaimed both inside and outside of Nashville for her cleverly irreverent brand of country-pop after three excellent major-label albums dating back to 2013’s Same Trailer Different Park, Golden Hour solidifies her status as one of the most adept songwriters working today. With lush arrangements offering the perfect soundscapes for Musgraves’ introspective and evocative musings that examine the broad spectrum of life and love’s euphoric highs and heart-numbing lows, the thirteen sublime songs contained therein can conjure the most lucid of daydreams and revelatory of reveries.
A “Slow Burn” of an album this is decidedly not—the 2018 GRAMMY Album of the Year winner seduces you swiftly upon impact and summons you back time and time again to indulge further.
LISTEN & WATCH: