Kacey Musgraves premiered a 70s-inspired music video for the song that serves as a nod to late singer-songwriter John Prine.
Musgraves, 35, brought “Cardinal” — the ballad that opens her latest full-length album, Deeper Well — to life with the new Scott Cudmore-directed music video on Monday morning (July 15). Musgraves reunited with Cudmore on the newly-debuted visual, having previously worked together on “Too Good to Be True,” on the same album. Cudmore said on Monday that “it’s been an incredible and beautiful experience collaborating with Kacey on these projects and I’m very grateful for my small part in the greater project that is the Deeper Well album. It’s awesome to work with such a thoughtful and detailed artist as she is and I’m excited to share this work.”
Musgraves explained in a zine that she released with Deeper Well earlier this year that she began to experience “unexplainable things,” and “cardinals started showing up on my doorstep soon after my good friend and mentor passed.” Prine died in April 2020 in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 73. Musgraves said Prine “always had a big connection to cardinals and felt that they were messengers from the spirit realm. He inspired the song, no doubt.”
Musgraves penned and co-produced the Prine-inspired track with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. The video brings “Cardinal” to life with nods to the 70s, a few kaleidoscopic effects, and, of course, Musgraves levitating in the air, one of several highly-anticipated moments she teased on her social media pages in the days before the video’s premiere. It’s described as a video that’s set “that feels surreal but familiar and ordinary at the same time.” It takes viewers “on an abstract and kaleidoscopic trip through birth, rebirth, nature, memory, dream, and the fragmented pieces of ourselves that eventually transform into different energy when we leave this world behind.”