Kacey Musgraves sends a message after being excluded from Grammys' country category

Kacey Musgraves is still a country girl at heart — no matter what the Grammys say.

The singer-songwriter sent that message loud and clear on social media Wednesday, after news broke that her latest album, Star-crossed, was deemed ineligible to compete for Country Album of the Year at the 2022 awards show.

"You can take the girl out of the country (genre) but you can't take the country out of the girl," Musgraves wrote on her Instagram story and Twitter, along with a photo of herself as a youngster in a fuschia cowboy hat. (The message also echoed lyrics from her 2018 song "Dime Store Cowgirl.")

John Lamparski/Getty Images Kacey Musgraves

On her Instagram story, Musgraves went further by posting photos and videos of herself performing and hanging out with country legends over the years, while also tagging them in a series of rhetorical questions.

"Ain't that right?" she asked Loretta Lynn, sharing a pic of the two onstage and tagging the country queen's account. "Whatchu think?" Musgraves asked Shania Twain. "What about you?" she tossed to Dolly Parton.

Musgraves wrapped up her slide show with a photo of herself with her middle fingers up.

On Tuesday, reports surfaced that a Recording Academy screening committee determined Star-crossed would not be eligible to compete in the Country Album category (a category Musgraves has won twice before), and would instead vie for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Representatives for the Recording Academy did not respond to multiple requests for comment from EW. Nominations for the 2022 Grammys will be announced Nov. 23.

According to multiple outlets, Universal Music Group Nashville president Cindy Mabe wrote a letter to Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. on Sunday questioning the decision to exclude Musgraves from the Country Album category.

"The idea that a handful of people including competitors, who would benefit from Kacey not being in the country category, are deciding what is country only exacerbates the problem," Mabe wrote, per Billboard. "The system is broken and sadly not just for Kacey Musgraves but for our entire genre because of how these decisions are made for music's biggest stage. Building roadblocks for artists who dare to fight the system is so dangerous and against everything I think the [Grammys] stand for. But that's where we are today."

Representatives for Universal Music Group Nashville didn't respond to EW's requests for comment.

Additional reporting by Marcus Jones.

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