Kacey Musgraves, “Cardinal”

This is a complicated background to a mishearing posting that has itself turned out to be more complex than I first imagined — a mishearing of the title word in the song “Cardinal” as recorded in 2024 by Kacey Musgraves. This posting is about the song; the titular bird, the northern cardinal; KM the singer-songwriter; KM’s wonderful performance of the song; and the song’s moving background story, inspired by the late country / folk singer John Prine. The song. “Cardinal” is from KM’s 2024 album Deeper Well. [Digression on the album. You can see KM’s performance of the title song “Deeper Well” here (“… to take care of myself … I found a deeper well”); deep well has a literal sense (‘well that is deep (undergound)’ ) that has a technical use (‘a well in which the water level is at a depth exceeding 22 feet beyond which the ordinary suction pump does not operate satisfactorily’ (Merriam-Webster online)), but in KM’s song it’s used metaphorically, for ‘a large but hidden source of…