March 13, 2019

David Crosby Discovers Kacey Musgraves

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David Crosby, the founding member of The Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash evidently stumbled across Kacey Musgraves earlier this week.

Many, many people have heard that girl, including members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, who awarded her the 2019 Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her album Golden Hour. Musgraves tweeted in reply, “Doesn’t ring a bell..”

There actually is a resonance between Musgraves’s earnest sound and Crosby’s own that makes the thought of the 77-year-old rock veteran jamming to Golden Hour seem totally apt.

Musgraves, like Crosby, is no stranger to rebellion against the status quo. Crosby may have debated whether to eschew his hippie looks and cut his hair, but Musgraves injected country music with that same freewheeling mentality when, in her 2013 single “Follow Your Arrow,” she told listeners to “kiss lots of boys, or kiss lots of girls if that’s something your into.” In challenging the entrenchment of conservatism in country music, Musgraves may be appealing to the older country rock set.

But it’s her clear, simple lyrics and optimistic view on the world that make Musgraves’s music such a relief amid a turbulent political climate not unlike that of the 60s and 70s. To the man who wrote on “Wooden Ships,” “If you smile at me I will understand, ‘cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language,” it must be a delight to hear Musgraves muse on “Slow Burn” that “In Tennessee, the sun’s goin’ down, but in Beijing they’re heading out to work.” “Slow Burn,” like each track on Golden Hour, is about slowing down and chilling out. It’s the same message of unity and peace espoused by the stoner rockers of half a century ago, but with with a smooth poppy sound the young people of today can jam to.

Maybe Musgraves’s talent is the one thing he and the other notoriously argumentative members of CSN can agree on.  

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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