In 2012, “Slate” asked if Kacey Musgraves was “the future of country music.”

If Friday night’s sold-out Tennessee Theatre show is any indication, the answer is a resounding “hell yes.”

I am admittedly cynical about contemporary country music. Bro-country stars like Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line are irrelevant and uninteresting to me—poor, repetitive songwriting compounded by an objectification of women and fetishization of the good ole days.

Twenty-six-year-old Musgraves, however, is astoundingly fresh. She combines the best of traditional country aesthetic (a la Alison Krauss and Glen Campbell) with cultural commentary and empowering lyrics that set a new standard for country music radio.

She arrived on stage after a solid show from the charming, folky John & Jacob, who Knoxville last saw at Remedy Coffee and the Pilot Light during last year’s Rhythm N’ Blooms Festival. They adjusted to the bigger venue easily, trading their festival get-up for matching maroon tailored suits and engaging the crowd with the hit “Be My Girl,” from the television show “Nashville.”

After intermission, Musgraves’ band struck up an ambient Wild West groove on the set decorated with electric neon cacti. She emerged, clad in a sparkly pink and blue cowgirl mini-dress with glittering tights and light-up cowboy boots — the country version of Katy Perry (who, coincidentally, she toured with last year).

Musgraves opened with the mid-tempo “Silver Linings,” also the first track on her 2013 debut album “Same Trailer, Different Park.” She then played her way through most of the album, interrupted by a variety of covers from Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again” to early 2000s hits like Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and TLC’s “No Scrubs.”

While her music can easily be enjoyed sitting down, Musgraves was able to rouse the crowd through the covers and her few up-tempo country rock songs, like “Blowin’ Smoke” and “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which she wrote for Miranda Lambert.

The audience, made up of a broad range of ages, sang along heartily, especially during the encore when she sang her inspirational, do-what-you-want anthem “Follow Your Arrow.” She also treated the crowd to her new single “Biscuits,” off a new album she said would be released in May. The hook? “Mind your own biscuits, and life will be gravy.”

Even with just one album, Musgraves has joined pop singers like Taylor Swift and Lorde in an era of relatable, powerful women who are writing about love, heartbreak, society and what it means to be a young woman. Now that Swift has abandoned country entirely for pop, popular country music needs artists like Musgraves to enliven a genre whose top-selling records come from mainly white men.

Near the end of her set, Musgraves discussed the theme of being yourself that often surfaces in her songs — and offered a critique of her beloved genre.

“Country music isn’t always welcoming to different groups of people,” she said. “And it should be, because country music is supposed to be about real life.

“I’m gonna change that.”