The Singles Jukebox

Following her arrow…

[Video][Website]
[5.20]

Alfred Soto: Watching an audience squeeze “Follow Your Arrow” tight as the anthem it wanted to be instead of the pat, tentative, formalist gesture it is, Musgraves and her writers have created a better realized formalist gesture. Thanks to the banjo and pedal steel solos, the arrangement even breathes a little. But it plays as  if team were so in love with the title concept that they  failed to imagine an accompanying song.
[6]

Iain Mew: There’s nothing unfamiliar about “Biscuits”, which couldn’t follow more obviously on from the most successful tracks of the first album, but it’s executed well enough to stay fresh. The ideal of a certain kind of second album single.
[7]

Anthony Easton: A kind of small government, libertarian morality tale, with a perfectly suitable jangly guitar, which repeats the critically successful “Follow Your Arrow.” An extra point for how she adds some variation near the clever line about salt and sugar. 
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: This feels like a holding pattern, if not out and out regression, from Musgraves after the (relatively) big success of her debut album, wherein she goes back to the lyrical well of “Follow Your Arrow.” Banjo pickin’ and lines like “mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy” don’t really do her any favors; this feels like country music for people who don’t like country music: “Look! She’s real! And liberal!”
[4]

Josh Love: Musgraves’ debut featured a few really fine songs but also evinced exactly the unfortunate tendency that flowers fully here. Namely, towards banal tolerant liberalism, which may be a preferable personality trait but is really no more artistically satisfying than banal reactionary conservatism. And the dope smoke doesn’t make the cornpone go down any easier.
[4]

Crystal Leww: This song is honestly so corny: there is a good old fashioned stomp-along, a background sing-along chorus, a banjo that twangs harder than you’d ever imagine, and the hook is “mind your own biscuits and life will be gravy.” And yet, this is so endearing, like Musgraves is really just genuinely the girl who would have been a kindergarten teacher had she not ended up being a country singer. Even my dead soul can’t hate that kind of earnestness.
[7]

Micha Cavaseno: The theme is decent, and Kacey sells this song with that sort of pointer fingers in the cheeks friendliness, a real “Hey, cheer up you dork and come home!” big sis feeling. But “Biscuits” also feels too easy to prep into something for Shannon, Lois and Bram with the “life will be gravy” kiss off, that weird place where in an attempt to be nice and positive, sometimes you step into the marshes of Richie Cunningham sweater levels of hokey. That certainly doesn’t make it a bad song, it just feels so daycare that it offsets the potency of the comforts trying to come through.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: A load of truisms made jaunty, but no more jaunty than a song living up to its calls not to rock the boat could be. It’s a pleasant trifle, though a trifle made with actual biscuits might be slightly more novel.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Kacey Musgraves decided that either the world or her career prospects needed another “Follow Your Arrow”; in the process, she’s forgotten that what made “Merry Go Round” great was her not minding her own business.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: As if taking the axiom that it’s not what you say it’s how you say it a bit too literally, Musgraves says precisely nothing and smiles and hopes people will extend first-album goodwill. I might, but not for this.
[3]