Keep It To Yourself

Album: Same Trailer Different Park (2013)
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Songfacts®:

  • This heartbreak song finds Musgraves wishing to be left alone in order to move on after a bad breakup.

    Keep it to yourself
    If you think that you still love me put it on a shelf
    If you're lookin' for someone, make it someone else
    When you're drunk
    And it's late
    And you're missin' me like hell
    Keep it to yourself


    Musgraves wrote this portrait of a depressed girl attempting to get over a broken relationship with Shane McAnally and Luke Laird. The same trio also penned her Same Trailer Different Park tracks "Blowin' Smoke" and "Step Off."
  • This was a hard song for Musgraves to write. She explained: "I was going through a bit of a personal down moment and a breakup, and self-discipline has never been something that I've been very good at. So, when this song talks about keeping it to yourself, it's just about knowing and wanting to know how that person feels about you like in a situation, but just knowing that it's not good for you anymore and that you literally have to be the strong person and say, 'Don't tell me, because it's just going to rope me back in.'"

    "It's going to create that cycle again, I feel like that's something that a lot of people go through and it's about getting over that hump," Musgraves continued. "That hard part where you're just going to die because this person's not there anymore so literally you just have to be like, 'If you have feelings for me, just put them on a shelf,' like I don't want to hear about them."
  • The song title came from Kacey's mother. "My mom, she's always sending me song ideas. Here and there she'll text me, and some of 'em are doozies," said the singer. "But she had this one, she said, 'Keep It To Yourself,' one day, and I thought that'd be a really cool song title…I typically don't start writing sessions off with a title, but I brought it one day to Shane McAnally and Luke Laird, and they loved it."
  • The song was released as the fourth single from Same Trailer Different Park. "I did a little Twitter poll to see kind of what the fans were feeling as far as what they would love to hear next," Musgraves explained. "I've been able to put out songs that are my personal favorites off the record, so this time I wanted to know what the fans would like to hear. There were some that were really high-charting in the poll, [and] 'Keep It To Yourself' was one of 'em. It's one of 'em that I get a ton of people just saying like, 'That is so me right now, and I just really have been through that.' So, it's for me some, but it's also definitely for the fans."

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