Kacey Musgraves
Dusty streets and sweaty dive bars populate Middle of Nowhere, the latest album from country superstar Kacey Musgraves. The longtime Nashvillian conjured many of the tracks during a post-breakup return to her small-town Texas roots.
“Out there on the edge of the world, way past common sense,” she sings at the top of the title track and album opener. “Past the Dairy Queen, the county line / Where there ain’t any fences.” She sets the stage for a lot of lonely wandering through rural Texas towns like Golden, the partial namesake for her 2018 country-pop opus Golden Hour.
Golden Hour was Musgraves’ true cross-genre breakthrough. She had already made a name for herself with the bold country two-pack of 2013’s Same Trailer Different Park and 2015’s Pageant Material, winning Grammys and landing near the top of critics’ year-end lists. Both albums were co-produced by award-winning country crafters Luke Laird and Shane McAnally.
The singer-songwriter’s fifth LP is out this week via Interscope/MCA Nashville
But starting with Golden Hour, Musgraves has primarily worked with producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian to expand her sonic palette. You can hear the results in Golden Hour’s varied soundscape (which draws on R&B-schooled pop and dance music), the cinematic pop of 2021’s Star-Crossed and the therapized folk of 2024’s Deeper Well.
Middle of Nowhere melds the two sides of Musgraves’ musical profile. She’s brought Laird and McAnally, as well as frequent collaborators and ace Nashville songwriters Josh Osborne and Brandy Clark, back into the fold alongside Fitchuk and Tashian. The result is an album filled to the brim with influences from Musgraves’ Texas upbringing — zydeco, Western swing, Musgraves’ beloved neotraditional country, even Mexican music traditions like norteño. Many of the album’s standout tracks, like uber-catchy lead single “Dry Spell” and its smoky sequel “Mexico Honey,” feel designed for line dancing until the sun comes up.
“Dry Spell,” Musgraves’ hilarious jaunt about feeling desperately “lonely with a capital H,” has done the unthinkable — it’s brought the outspoken iconoclast back to the country airwaves. Like her spiritual brother Sturgill Simpson, Musgraves has generally found herself further and further outside the country music mainstream as her star has ascended elsewhere. But “Dry Spell,” despite its myriad double entendres and eggplant-starring music video, has been steadily climbing the country charts.
Country radio might come calling again for “Horses and Divorces.” The mea culpa collab with Miranda Lambert sees the two luminaries squash their years-long beef — thanks in part to a shared love of horses, commiseration over their divorces and having grown up in neighboring rural Texas towns.
The country-legend supporting turns continue on “Uncertain, TX,” a screed that has small-town fuckboys squarely in its sights and features Musgraves’ idol Willie Nelson. Bluegrass breakout Billy Strings shows up on the plucky ballad “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy,” and Colorado folkster Gregory Alan Isakov stops by on the dreamy “Coyote.”
Musgraves has always had a bit of a cinematic flair to her albums — the descriptive details and earworm turns of phrase help you visualize the stories being told. But even more so than Star-Crossed, which had an actual 48-minute companion short film, the songs on Middle of Nowhere often feel like being dropped into a Western hangout in medias res. The rodeo-inspired promotional materials — including the album cover, shot by her sister Kelly, which depicts Musgraves donning a cowboy hat, boots and a plain white tee while posed with a gigantic steer — make me think of old Howard Hawks Westerns. I wonder if the noted Studio Ghibli appreciator has watched Johnny Guitar?
Much of the discourse about this album will be centered on a “Kacey Musgraves is back in the country world” angle; she even noted this herself at an album preview at Studio 615 in March. How can it not be with this much twang involved? As I sat on the metal bleachers at the event — among the rodeo barrels, with Musgraves playing us the album front to back — I honestly thought the same thing. But that pop touch of her Fitchuk/Tashian era is there too. The combination of the two makes for her best album since Golden Hour.
