Watch Kacey Musgraves pause her ACL set to clip her nails – all in the name of guitar technique

Country star Kacey Musgraves paused her set at Austin City Limits festival on Sunday (October 9) in order to clip her fingernails in front of a gigantic crowd – telling them that an ambitious nail job had impeded her guitar playing and she’d had enough.

Musgraves was approximately 50 minutes through her headline set on the Honda stage at the city’s Zilker Park when she paused proceedings.

“I know this is weird – and not a planned part of the show,” said Musgraves. “But I’m going to have to cut my damn nails for this song. 

“It’s a thing you wouldn’t think about. You try to be a cute girl off the stage and you're like, ‘I want my nails done!’ And then, when you try to play guitar, you sound like absolute shit. So it’s just not possible, if you don’t mind me…”

The singer-songwriter then took a moment with her clippers, joking with the crowd, “Are these HD cameras? Because these are rough right now!”

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Musgraves had made the call in order to properly perform her debut single Merry Go ‘Round, which featured on 2012’s Same Trailer Different Park and recalled living in Austin at the time, “close to nothing cool, [except] maybe Taco Cabana…” 

“I had just written this song and I turned it in to the label and they said, ‘Yeah, this is going to absolutely tank. It’s too slow, it’s too depressing,’” revealed Musgraves before her performance. “But I was like, you know, I don’t care, because if I go down in flames for this song, it’s something I really believe in. It’s written about where I’m from.”

Throughout the set, Musgraves mainly used two long-favored acoustic guitars: a Martin 00L-17 in Black Smoke finish and a her 1957 Gibson J-45 in Tobacco Sunburst, which she has lovingly nicknamed ‘Janice’.

The songwriter’s performance also drew headlines for an onstage dig at Texan State Senator Ted Cruz. During the song High Horse, Musgraves sang, “‘Cause everyone knows someone who kills the buzz, every time they open their mouth... Ted Cruz.”

You can check out Musgraves’ full show on the video above. The singer songwriter returns for her second set at Austin City Limits – and, seemingly, the last tour date in support of 2021 album Star Crossed – this weekend (October 16).