People turn to entertainment to forget their troubles, not hear a lecture on how to vote, thinks Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. 

“The bottom line of my thing, really, is that my job in the live music world is [for] those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can,” Jagger said on a New York Times podcast on Saturday. “For two hours or whatever it is, to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages and whatever, just to give them the best time they can have.”

Jagger also stated that music is like sports, because fans participate to escape the worrisome chatter of whatever else is going on in the world.

“You don’t want to lecture them,” Jagger emphasized on the podcast, referring to fans. While Jagger said this in the context of live shows specifically, there have been many music stars who have recently declared that it’s better to avoid all talk of politics across their platforms completely. 

But not pop star Kacey Musgraves. Perhaps the advice of Jagger is something the singer-songwriter could benefit from applying to her social media habits. 

The “liberal misfit” of country music took to Instagram on Sunday to share her disdain for a recent decision in Texas to make the Bible a part of the state’s public school curriculum. 

“The bible being forced by people who don’t even follow it themselves. … This is simply indoctrination and its not okay,” she posted. This goes against the grain of the growing trend among celebrities to return to the simpler times of keeping politics and their platforms separate. Last month, The Washington Stand reported that several celebrity musicians and actors, such as Kenny Chesney, are purposely avoiding mixing their political opinions with their work as of late. 

Along with Chesney, fellow singer John Mellencamp, country artist Jelly Roll, actress Jennifer Lawrence, television host Neil Patrick Harris, comedian Kevin James, and actors Mark Wahlberg and Josh Duhamel have all publicly stated that they resist talking about their views on such matters in the spotlight. 

In response to Musgrave’s rant, one user wrote on X, “It will never not be funny that atheists think they know more about the Bible more than most Christians do.”

Musgraves is a Texas native but doesn’t embrace the values and ideologies that many residing in her home state often do. The Daily Northwestern describes Musgraves as “an outspoken progressive with little patience for her genre’s reactionary figureheads.”

Another X user wrote, “Well, Kacey, you can just leave the GREAT state of TEXAS which is lovingly known as GOD’S country. STOP bashing the BIBLE!”

Musgraves is also an outspoken supporter of the LGBTQ community, a cause her fellow country musicians are much less publicly aligned with. Before the 2020 presidential election, Musgraves posted on X, “If you love an LGBTQ+ person and you’re planning on voting for Donald Trump in November, that’s an act of violence against them.”

In the past, some country singers have departed from the genre over what they felt were irreconcilable differences with the community of conservative-leaning musicians, such as female soloist Maren Morris and the Dixie Chicks.

“She says she’s leaving because of what she views as the country music industry’s unwillingness to honestly reckon with its history of racism and misogyny and to open its gates to more women and queer people and people of color,” the Los Angeles Times reported of Morris in 2023. 

The Dixie Chicks famously left country music in 2003 after speaking out against the war in Iraq and criticizing then- President George W. Bush. 

Perhaps the late Toby Keith understood Jagger’s message better than anyone. Keith played to make people happy — no matter who they were — not to advance a political agenda. Keith performed at events for both Democratic and Republican presidents before his death from cancer in 2024.

“I don’t apologize for performing for our country or military,” Keith insisted in 2017 before performing at an event for President Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I performed at events for previous presidents [George W.] Bush and [Barack] Obama and over 200 shows in Iraq and Afghanistan for the USO.”