Kacey Musgraves Performs ‘The Architect’ at CMA Awards 2024

On November 21, 2024By Littum

Kacey Musgraves performed "The architect" by 2024 CMAs. - Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images — Kacey Musgraves performed “The Architect” at the 2024 CMAs. – Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

It made perfect sense: The song Kacey Musgraves chose to perform at this year’s CMA Awards is also by far the most traditionally country song on her 2024 album Deeper well. It’s also, perhaps not coincidentally, the only song on the record co-written with her old Music Row writing partners, Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne.

Performing all alone on acoustic guitar (one of the only purely solo acoustic performances of the night), Musgraves delivered a tender, moving take on “The Architect”. Eleven years after she became a CMA debut with “Follow Your Arrow,” Musgraves’ stripped-down reading of her Deeper well the ballad was proof that there are still few mainstream country singers more compelling in a solo acoustic format.

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“The Architect” is a sparse track that finds mouse pits pondering the nature of life and existence; it was written after the 2023 Covenant school shooting in Nashville.

“It was really born out of an organic conversation about things that were happening in the world,” she shared Nashville scene earlier this year. “Josh (Osborne) said, ‘Yeah, you know, what’s going on here? Can I talk to the architect? Is there a plan for any of this?'”

Despite Deeper Well’s lacking any obvious country singles (in fact, none of the songs so much as picked up on country radio) Musgraves earned an impressive four CMA nominations this year, including Album of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year and Musical Event of the Year for “I Remember Everything” , her chart-topping duet with Zach Bryan. She is also nominated for a number of Grammys for Deeper wellincluding Best Country Song for “The Architect.”

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