A Grammy-winning song recorded while Kacey Musgraves had… strep throat.
She and fellow country superstar Zach Bryan recently won the Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance category with their stunning duet “I Remember Everything,” and Kacey is also gearing up to release her own album next Friday, Deeper Well.
The Texas native sat down with Willie Geist for an interview that will air on Sunday TODAY this coming Sunday, and in a clip shared by People earlier today, he of course asked her about that hit song and the story of how that song came to be.
Kacey says they were on a deadline to get into the studio, and even though her throat was bothering her some ahead of time, she had to go lay down vocals or she’d miss her opportunity to be featured:
“Oh my gosh, well it was kind of a funny story. I got asked if I wanted to do the song, and of course, I was like, ‘I’m down,’ but I wasn’t feeling well. My throat was hurting. I had just gone on this trip.
And they were like, ‘Well, we kind of have a deadline. Like, if you want to be on this song you kind of got to get it in by this day.’ It was in a couple days, and I was like alright, I’ll give it a shot.”
Kacey says her voice wasn’t really cooperating the way she wanted it to and she left just hoping it didn’t “really suck.” From there, she headed straight to the doctor’s office, where she learned she had strep throat.
She immediately texted the studio engineer to apologize, hoping he wouldn’t also get sick:
“So I go to the studio, and I’m like, man, my voice is not cooperating. And I was like, ‘I hope this doesn’t really suck. But I got through the song, I did it, and I was like, alright, I feel pretty good about that.
But I left the studio, and I went to the doctor immediately and I had strep. And I like, texted like the engineer. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I had strep, and I was just all up in your space. Crazy.”
She joked that the song came out “sick as f*ck,” adding that she was grateful he asked her to be part of the tune they’d written together in this way:
“Sick as f*ck, literally… I’m just kidding. But it was really great to be asked by Zach, and I love the song. I connected with it immediately, and I’m just grateful he asked me.”
It’s already topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts and is steadily climbing at country radio, too. It’s easily my favorite song from Zach Bryan, and while I’ve always felt that Kacey is one of the best vocalists in country music and has such a pure, angelic voice, this is extremely impressive and she’s right…
It is sick as f*ck, and whether she had strep or not, she was pitch-perfect and made the song the magical duet that it is:
Zach actually brought Kacey out to his concert in Chicago last night to duet it together live for an audience for the first time:
“I Remember Everything”
