Kacey Musgraves’ ACM Song of The Year Nominee ‘Space Cowboy’

Kacey Musgraves is nominated for three awards at the upcoming Academy of Country Music Awards. One of her nominations is for Song of The Year for her "Space Cowboy."

The song is from her multi-Grammy winning album Golden Hour, which is also up for the ACM's Album of The Year honor.

The song title reminds us of the Steve Miller Band's 1973 "Some People Call Me the Space Cowboy," but Musgraves' "Space Cowboy" is much different with a clever play on words.

Kacey shares how the song came about, “The inspiration for ‘Space Cowboy’ was actually triggered by something that my horseback riding teacher, Lori, said to me one day. We were out at the arena and we were watching this stallion go totally crazy in the arena just galloping from one end to the other, just kind of losing its mind and being really reckless and really powerful. I watched it come charging toward me, and I was standing on the other side of the gate, and Lori was screaming at me, ‘Back up, back up! Move out of the way!’ And I really didn’t think anything of it. I said, ‘I’m on the other side of the gate. The gate’s closed. It doesn’t matter.’ She said, ‘Girl-when they wanna go, they’re gonna go. There ain’t no sense in closing the gate.’"

She continued, "That made a big impression on me and I wrote it down, and then ‘Space Cowboy’ came a couple of days later when I wrote it with Shane McAnally and Luke Laird. It just seemed to kind of apply itself in a metaphorical sense to a narrative that I’ve found myself in many times in my life. It’s a narrative that a lot of people I know can relate to. So, this song was very important song for me to include on the album because though I am in a really happy place now, it’s not always been that way and it was important for me to include that.”

Other nominees for ACM Song of The Year this year are Cole Swindell's "Break Up In The End," Chris Stapleton's "Broken Halos," FGL featuring Bebe Rexha's "Meant To Be," Dan + Shay's "Tequila" and Russell Dickerson's "Your."

The Academy of Country Music Awards will air live on CBS on Sunday, April 7, 2019.

-Nancy Brooks