Kacey Musgraves reflects on controversy surrounding her breakthrough song ‘Follow Your Arrow’ 12 years later.

When Kacey Musgraves released “Follow Your Arrow” in 2013, she didn’t expect it to emerge as one of country’s most controversial singles. But it did.

The third single from her debut, Grammy-winning studio album, Same Trailer Different Park, “Follow Your Arrow” was quick to generate discourse within the country music community when it was released in October 2013. Musgraves, who was 25 years old when the song came out, received backlash for the song’s references of same-sex love and recreational marijuana use. The Golden Hour singer-songwriter co-wrote the track with Brandy Clark and record producer Shane McAnally.

With lyrics like, “Kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls, if that’s something you’re into” and “Roll up a joint, or don’t/Just follow your arrow where it points, yeah,” the track made it onto Billboard’s list of most controversial country songs of all time. While performing the song during the 2013 Country Music Awards, the lyric “roll up a joint” was also censored and deemed inappropriate for primetime television.

“Oh my gosh, it was so controversial,” Musgraves told the Hollywood Reporter of the song in an interview for their May 2025 issue. “It ended up tanking — it was banned by country radio. But I would never trade that for the love and the people it brought to my world. I’m not going to present a watered-down version of myself to be accepted.”

Musgraves told the Hollywood Reporter that she didn’t release the song, which went on to win Song of the Year at the 2014 CMA Awards, with the intention of being seen as a rule-breaker in country music.

“I’m just doing my job as a songwriter,” she said. “When you look at country music as a genre and where it started, it is really textured, beautiful layers of real stories, heartbreak, things that aren’t always easy to talk about. It’s stories for the everyday person. And that’s what always draws me back to country music: It’s there for you, no matter what you’re going through.”

For fans of Musgraves, this sentiment couldn’t be more true. On TikTok, fans have shared what the song means to them — and how it’s helped them embrace themselves.

Considered “the queer fan’s country music queen” by BuzzFeed, and the “ultimate ally” by Them, Musgraves was the first country music artist to perform at the GLAAD Media Awards, which honors artists who use their platforms to spotlight the LGBTQ community. She also has a history of championing queer artists: She collaborated with Troye Sivan on the rerelease of his track “Easy,” and previously toured with King Princess and electropop trio MUNA.

The country music darling, who hails from Golden, Texas, told NPR in 2024 that while she did have a “wonderful childhood,” she is from a “very conservative” part of East Texas. Musgraves attributes her shift in perspective to an ex-boyfriend, whom she met after moving to Nashville.

“He was from a completely different upbringing than me, a liberal family in upstate New York. He had a ton of gay friends and he just sat me down one day and we had a real hard and honest conversation about it,” Musgraves said. “He just helped me completely open up my eyes and see and I was just like, ‘Damn, I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to get out of where I came from, and have my eyes and my heart open to this really wonderful community, and they’ve made me way more well-rounded.”

Twelve years later, Musgraves still proudly plays “Follow Your Arrow” at her shows. The country star played the song at numerous stops along her Deeper Well Tour in 2024.

“It was met with a lot of ‘hell no’s.’ It was met with a lot of opposition,” Musgraves told a crowd in 2024, before launching into the song. “They said, ‘You’re gonna go down in flames if you do this.’ And I was like, ‘Well, at least I’ll be going down in flames for something I really believe in. At least it was my true self.’”