Tragic Details About Kacey Musgraves

In March of 2024, country star Kacey Musgraves released her sixth studio album, "Deeper Well," which featured track after track of the songwriter's signature lyrical style. Musgraves doesn't share every bit of her life with the world, but she's vulnerable in her music, giving listeners a pulse on her current state if they look hard enough. "I feel very grounded where I'm at. I feel very, like, at peace. I'm in my mid-30s now, and I just went through a little bit of a rough period. But I feel like on the other side of that and, you know, I've learned a lot about myself," Musgraves told NPR about how she felt after wrapping up "Deeper Well." 

Said rough patch is not the only time in her life that Musgraves has experienced hardship. Between the end of romantic relationships, the loss of important people, and certain health conditions, Musgraves hasn't always been able to look at life with rose-colored glasses. Like anyone else, the singer is no stranger to tragedy.

Kacey Musgraves has written about many topics throughout her songwriting career, with love being one of her most explored. In 2016, Musgraves met fellow singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly, and the two instantly hit it off. After collaborating musically, Musgraves and Kelly fell in love. "He, like, stuck a knife in my heart and twisted it. It was so good," Musgraves told Spin in 2018. "He knocked down these walls I feel like I had put up, and he made me truly laugh again." Musgraves went on to write one of her best pieces of work and most famous album to date, "Golden Hour," about falling in love with Kelly.

However, as some of Musgraves' songs attest, not all love lasts, and in 2020, after nearly three years of marriage, the couple filed for divorce. "We've made this painful decision together," Musgraves and Kelly told The Associated Press. "It simply just didn't work." Despite the difficult choice to end their marriage, Musgraves and Kelly left their romantic relationship with respect for each other. "We will remain true friends for the rest of our lives. We hold no blame, anger, or contempt for each other," they said. In true Musgraves fashion, she worked out her feelings from her divorce through her work. The award-winning musician followed up "Golden Hour" with "Star-Crossed," an album that conversely explored falling out of love.

Many people struggle with their mental health, especially during difficult times in their lives. Kacey Musgraves experienced just that at the end of her marriage to her ex-husband, Ruston Kelly. While her marriage was ending, Musgraves, like the rest of the world, was also going through the COVID-19 pandemic, the two events creating a tough time for the singer to navigate. "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," Musgraves told Elle of the time in her life.

Musgraves didn't let herself live in her pain. To heal, she turned to a guided therapeutic LSD trip, which she went on with the help of a friend of hers who's a doctor. "It's been looked at in a lot of areas for help with depression, anxiety, addiction, so many things. Basically, some neuroscientists [from Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University] have created a playlist that's music from all over the world, put together to guide you, in that state of mind, through different emotions, feeling memories," Musgraves told The Guardian of the experience, which she also credits for helping her find the title to her album "Star-Crossed." Much of Musgrave's struggle through the dissolution of her marriage was documented in the album, which the artist described as a modern tragedy.

Not long after Kacey Musgraves and Ruston Kelly divorced, Musgraves began dating a new man, Cole Schafer. Rumors of a relationship sparked in June of 2021, and soon after, they confirmed their relationship status via social media. Both would go on to gush about the other on occasion, particularly on Instagram, remaining a couple for over two years. They even organized a charity event together, the Teddy Bear Ball, which benefitted the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. Unfortunately, in November of 2023, it was reported that Musgraves and Schafer had split. Neither publicly confirmed the breakup at the time (Musgraves eventually did), but both have since deleted most or all photos of each other from their Instagram profiles.

Musgraves is at peace with her decision to be so open about dating Schafer. "I don't regret living and loving as hard as I do. Whenever I'm in a relationship, I'm all f***ing in. I think that hesitancy breeds hesitancy, and if you go in with something with one foot, it's going to fail," Musgraves told The Cut. And she learned a thing or two from her previous relationship. "After divorce, it's like, on one hand, I do want to self-protect, but at the same time, if your heart is feeling open, I think you have to just show up for it. I'm still trying to figure out the balance of that," she said.

Kacey Musgraves has hit some of the highest points any musician can hope for. She's won seven Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; toured the world as a headlining artist; had a number-one hit and four top-ten albums — and that's just scratching the surface. Given Musgraves' success, she could be far more famous than she is. Instead, Musgraves prefers to keep to herself. "I really enjoy and revere my privacy and having something just for me and my personal life. I'm really kind of a homebody," Musgraves said in an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe. And there's no deeper meaning to it. Musgraves simply doesn't like the spotlight. "As you get ready to release a project, this tsunami of madness is coming toward me. And you're going to be very public-facing again, and that can be — that's kind of hard for me sometimes," she said.

In addition to wanting to keep out of the spotlight as much as possible, Musgraves also has a heavy desire to stay grounded. "I work hard to keep attached to reality. Being detached from reality is one of my greatest fears," Musgraves said to The Guardian. "I've seen it a lot of times in the industry, getting to work with artists I looked up to, and I would be astounded at how detached from reality they were. It scared the s*** out of me, so I never want to be like that," she said.

A career in music might not seem like a physically dangerous choice, but Kacey Musgraves has a story that proves otherwise. While in Iceland filming the music video for her song "Deeper Well" off her 2024 album of the same name, Musgraves worried she might die in a freak accident. The weather in Iceland was incredibly windy while her team was shooting the video, and as is shown in the footage, Musgraves was near a cliff much of the time. "We picked literally the worst possible week to go. It was high wind advisories — I almost got blown off that cliff. I was almost like, 'This video will be my death announcement," Musgraves said to Jimmy Fallon while on "The Tonight Show." "It was a sheer drop down to the ocean. It was treacherous. Even the locals were like, 'This is some scary s***,'" she said. Though Musgraves told the story with levity, there was legitimate danger present.

Despite this and all other tragedies Musgraves has experienced, she has a positive attitude about life. Musgraves likened life to a Shakespeare piece when speaking to Elle in an interview. "They're just wrapped up in a different way. Those things will carry on forever, as long as humans are living, breathing, crying, loving, dying, fighting, all of that," she said. "Being a human is tragic, but it's also beautiful. And you can't really experience the beautiful parts of life without also experiencing the absolutely heart-wrenching."