Kacey Musgraves is not happy about the report that her new album, Star-Crossed, has been excluded from the country music category at the upcoming Grammys.

Earlier this week, word spread that the country singer's fifth studio album, which dropped in early September, will not be eligible for the Best Country Album category and instead compete in the Best Pop Vocal Album category. Fast forward to Wednesday (October 13) and Musgraves has made her feelings known. "You can take the girl out of the country (genre) ... but you can't take the country out of the girl," she captioned a throwback photo of her as a child in a red cowboy hat via Instagram Story, echoing the lyrics from her 2018 track, "Dime Store Cowgirl."

She went on to share a number of images and footage of her performing with country titans over the year, including Loretta Lynn, Shania Twain, George Strait, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. For her post with Reba McEntire, she wrote, "Can't not ask @reba." At the very end, she summed up her sentiments with a solo shot of her onstage flipping off the double bird.

On Tuesday, word spread that Cindy Mabe, the president of Musgraves' label home UMG Nashville, took the Recording Academy's country genre screening committee into question in a letter obtained by Billboard. “Sonically, it’s got more country instrumentation than Golden Hour which won Country Album of the Year in 2019. To compare Golden Hour to star-crossed, both albums were produced by Ian Fitchuk, Daniel Tashian and Kacey Musgraves. Both albums were mixed by Shawn Everett. On Golden Hour, Ian, Daniel and Kacey wrote 7 of the 13 songs and on star-crossed they wrote 11 of the 15. Both albums complete each other with Golden Hour telling the story of falling in love and star-crossed telling the conclusion of the breakup,” she wrote in the note. “There is no departure in sound from these two projects. This album was consistently classified as country throughout it’s [sic] metadata and overall labeling across the DSP accounts and partners. star-crossed appeared on every major country playlist of every DSP."

Jeff Benton

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