Style marker
Phrase-ending 3̂
Kacey Musgraves evokes a hint of wistfulness at important moments in her songs by singing the 3rd scale degree. She uses 3̂ (or, less often, 5̂) to punctuate a key phrase, especially a line including the song's title, in places where resolution to the tonic would otherwise be expected.
This device is most strongly associated with country music: see e.g. Jim Croce's Operator (1972) and Tim McGraw's Can't Tell Me Nothin' (2004).
In Kacey Musgraves' catalogue, the frequency of phrase-ending 3̂s peaks on 2018's Golden Hour, after which she deploys them more sparingly.
