Kacey Musgraves opens her new song “Dry Spell” with quite the complaint. “It’s been a real long 335 days,” she sings, elongating the word “real” in sly exasperation. “And the last time, it wasn’t good anyway.”
That’s when one of the most admired country singer-songwriters to achieve arena-headlining status this century shifts her focus from bemoaning how much time has passed since her last hookup to reeling off the most entertaining string of down-home double entendres for unmet desire in recent memory. “I’m so lonely, lonely with a capital ‘H,’ if you know what I mean,” she insists, with a deadpan suggestiveness that’s accentuated in the music video. “I’ve been sitting on the washing machine.” By the end of the cunningly pensive track and the accompanying clip, set in a dreary grocery store and co-directed by Musgraves and Hannah Lux Davis, she’s turned an array of country cohabitation tropes on their heads and stared a little too long, and longingly, at the ripe produce on display.
The first single from Musgraves’ sixth album, Middle of Nowhere, signals the end of a different kind of drought. She got her start in a folksy, multigenerational, tradition-steeped scene in remote East Texas before sharpening her songcraft and easily distinguishing herself in the fratty Nashville of the early 2010s. The witty wordplay and artfully kitschy use of hand-played instruments on her first two albums, Same Trailer, Different Park and Pageant Material, was a revelation, partially thanks to her knack for coolly, casually reflecting millennial social mores that registered as a departure for Nashville.
Musgraves’ subsequent tonal, stylistic and conceptual explorations — across the luminous reveries of Golden Hour, the cinematic Star-Crossed and the pastoral questing of Deeper Well — seemed necessary. How better to satisfy her restless imagination, and simultaneously welcome new waves of genre-agnostic listeners into her audience? Along the way, she also managed to decouple her deep affection for country music’s settings, signifiers and forms from any lingering, or limiting, sense of obligation to its industry gatekeepers.
Middle of Nowhere, scheduled to be released on May 1, will stand as Musgraves’ stunning return: to Lost Highway Records, the reactivated, roots-leaning label that originally signed her, only to be absorbed into Nashville major label system before she released her debut; to her incisive contemplation of small-town environs, which now serve as a backdrop for her inquiries into grown-up solitude; and to arid, Western textures that accentuate that landscape and trace its borderlands with Mexico. Musgraves has chosen guest performers, including Gregory Alan Isakov, Billy Strings, Willie Nelson and Miranda Lambert — with whom she shares a good-naturedly salty, long-time-coming duet called “Horses and Divorces” — that reaffirm her place in country lineage. But it’s the accumulated insight Musgraves brings to the work that makes it a whole new landmark.
She sat down with NPR Music in Nashville for the exclusive first interview on Middle of Nowhere and the mindset that shaped it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jewly Hight: “Dry Spell” sounds like something that could have come out of a really free and unguarded group text. But on the other hand, it is incredibly well-crafted as a song. How’d it take shape?
Kacey Musgraves: I typically always have been in relationships. This was the longest period in my adult life where I was on my own, and I had gone through a break up. I was taking stock of my relationships and what I want[ed] in my life, and really learning how to lean into being alone. I started really loving my singledom.
It was a long time without any intimacy with anyone else, and I had always feared that before I experienced it, just having this notion that I needed someone to be happy, which I found to be completely untrue.
I wrote the title down — “Dry Spell” — and because [it was what I was] going through. I wrote most of this record in the longest single period of my life. And it was really fun to be back in the room with so many of my old collaborators and friends, Shane [McAnally], Josh Osborne, Luke Laird. Nobody does humor better than those guys, and I was craving humor again. That was a big part of earlier albums, and then I maybe purposefully steered away from that, just so I didn’t paint myself into some sort of bumper sticker lane. And then life happens: There’s a divorce album, Golden Hour is its own thing. Deeper Well is pretty introspective, kind of calm and therapeutic. And then now we’re here.
I really can’t think of many, or maybe even any, other examples of a country artist who’s a woman writing about thirstiness, desire, without even mentioning a male protagonist. How about you?
No, I don’t think so. I think a lot of songs, people are trying to convince you of how sexy they are, and I’m telling you how I have not been getting any. Even the chickens are getting laid, and I’m not.
Listening to “Dry Spell” made me think of when you released “Merry Go Round,” “It Is What It Is,” “Follow Your Arrow” — these songs where you’re conveying sentiments in a low-key, matter-of-fact way that sounds completely natural coming from you, but lands in this slightly transgressive way in the context of country music. You have had a knack for doing that. What do you think it is about your voice as a writer and a vocalist that has made that a thing?
I find the human condition pretty hilarious. I feel like the universe has a pretty killer sense of humor, so I just find a lot of humor in the everyday. One of my all-time favorite writers did it best: John Prine. I can be quite introspective and maybe heady or whatever, but I really love anchoring something with that [sense of humor]. I feel like we need to laugh more in this modern crazy time.
It wouldn’t land the way that it does, wouldn’t be as successful or as funny, if you didn’t deliver it the way you do. Timing and delivery is so important to comedy.
It started because I knew I’m not a textbook singer, like, finger on the ear, finger waving in the air, Mariah Carey-style. I don’t consider myself that type of vocalist, so I like to rely more on the subtleties.
I love restraint in art and I think it’s hard to do, especially in production. I think a lot of people love loading up a track with as much as possible. I just don’t feel inspired by that. I love for there to be room to breathe and some negative space in there. I think with the delivery of the lyrics or the melody, there has to be that same sort of approach. I’m not convincing anyone of anything. It’s there if you want it and it’s fine if you don’t.
I wondered what’s appealing about returning your focus to a small town setting when you can bring all of the insight you’ve accumulated to it.
I think it’s a little bit of that, but it’s also just finding myself being totally okay in this proverbial “middle of nowhere.” And that can apply to many different things. It can be how you feel relationally or emotionally. It could be someone in between jobs. It can be between relationships or even geographically speaking. I do come from the quote “middle of nowhere.” The title track for the record and the general concept of it came from being in this very singular period exploring my roots again like where I’m from in Texas, spending time there and getting back into horseback riding and all these things. It was on a little trip to my hometown where I just was wandering around — there’s not much there — and I had noticed this sign that someone had put up there that I had never noticed before. It just says, “Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.” And I loved that it was a bit self-deprecating but also kind of confident in the sense that it’s like, “We know what we are and we own it.” It made an impression on me. I got really obsessed with the concept of liminal space.
Liminal spaces are defined as the transitional space from in between a Point A and a Point B, typically not designed to actually hang out in. And if we’re speaking about a physical space, they’re usually filled with people. We’re talking, like, airport terminals, where you are meant to pass through. There’s an eeriness to them, and a nostalgia, a little bit. I feel really drawn to those places. For some reason, we’re always rushing to define ourselves in the next thing, whether it’s a job or relationship or whatever. And I just really loved accepting that I was in this literal middle of nowhere in many senses. I found a lot of clarity there. It’s such a fertile breeding ground for anything that’s coming next.
You were talking about going through a single phase, but I think you deserve credit for more than just literal reportage on what was going on in your relational life. To me, one of the overarching themes of the album is aloneness and isolation, but it’s really worlds away from “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Listeners are not going to hear you pining for someone or wallowing in heartbreak. You are exploring wounds of absence, but also making all this room for reflection.
It’s powerful to know now that I don’t need anyone to be happy. Because now whatever I do choose to put back into my life, whether it’s friends, opportunities, relationships, it can be because it actually really serves me, because now I know I’m freaking good without it. So there’s a confidence that comes with that, kind of a clarity.
There is this perception that I’m sure you’ve encountered, that traditional country music is simple in execution and sentiment. You have leaned further into that side of your sensibilities than at any time since your Texas Two Bits kid yodeling days, and made music that carries emotional complexity and captures ambiguity and ambivalence. How did you choose the sonic palette that would suit the album’s perspective?
I love traditional country music. It might sound cliche, but when I am in a period of sadness or heartbreak, I really do turn to old school country music, the traditional side of the genre. It’s so comforting because it’s all depressing songs about being heartbroken. So you feel very seen.
I grew up singing Western swing, yodeling — very traditional country music. Those sounds are baked into what feels like home to me. And so exploring them doesn’t feel like I’m trying on a hat that doesn’t fit. It just feels like part of me. It’s always there to some degree, but it felt good this time to really lean into it. For me it’s always about finding the balance. If a lyric is going in that direction really hard, maybe the track isn’t, so it’s never too on the nose.
In the studio, they call me “the ax man” because we will load up a track with all these production elements, and my favorite thing to do is get in there and just one by one start muting things to see where the perfect balance is and what crosses the line a little too much in terms of taste or space. I love the eraser tool. It’s almost like I can feel the balance in my body when I’m hearing something. The architecture of the thing is really important to me.
You’ve cultivated these two really intimate circles of collaborators, first, writing and recording with Shane McAnally and Luke Laird primarily.
And Brandy Clark, Josh Osborne, Natalie Hemby.
And then, beginning in the Golden Hour era, working with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. You enlisted both of those teams to write this new material with you, and you employed Tashian and Fitchuk as your co-producers and primary band. How did you utilize the specialties you’ve developed together?
Both crews have different strong points. I’ll always love what I’ve done with Daniel and Ian. They are true musicians through and through. [But] I was craving some of the bite that I can achieve with some of these other people for this thing specifically. And it was just fun. There was no pressing deadline or anything. So I was just like, “Hey, would you guys want to get together and write some like super country s***? Even just for fun, just see what we can get.”
I think it’s gonna be really tempting for a lot of people to say that it’s a return for me. I agree with some of that. I’ve never taken some stand saying I’m leaving country. It’s a huge part of me. I don’t think I could shake it if I even wanted to.
I revisited the first sit-down that we did back in 2013, and it struck me that your publicists were pushing you to talk about your appreciation for the Nashville industry community. At least back then, you were expected to show your devotion to the country music industry itself. That seems like a separate matter from your relationship to the musical tradition of country music itself. How were you able to differentiate between the two?
Moving to Nashville back in 2008, it completely changed my life. I think it was the best move I ever made. I have a deep respect for the community here. That has never changed. That being said, I wouldn’t want to be beholden by that either. So while I have continued to respect and still very much do and feel part of it, I have always just wanted to make sure that the only compass I’m following is the one that feels right to me, whether that makes sense to the rest of the community or not.
That’s exactly the kind of unencumbered mentality that I have picked up on.
I’ve seen people try and pretzel themselves into the ideal of the moving target, and it just does not bode well for them. They might get lucky and strike gold and have a moment with that, but at the end of the day, they don’t really have that foundation to fall back on that has really let people know who they are. I think I was scared from an early age of getting trapped in that.
How you situate your music geographically has always been important, beginning with depicting this small-town Texas world, and challenging simplistic portraits of it [before] pulling in elements of Hollywood with Star-Crossed, and then with Deeper Well moving into a different kind of pastoral space, more Greenwich Village urban folk revival. What is appealing to you about returning your imagination to small-town Texas?
For me, sonically, it’s always about exploring the borders of country music. I think this album has a lot to do with borders, and honestly, [so does] every album of mine, because country shares fence lines with so many other styles. I’m really interested in [looking] where those two meet and then making something new. I love bluegrass and there’s a little bit of that breezy ’70s, ’80s, ’90s country that I love so much and then there’s also a lane where country meets traditional Mexican music, norteno and even zydeco down in Louisiana. So in a way, I don’t think the record is any different than anything else I’ve done, but it does lean a little harder into the country palette.
You mentioned the Western swing that you came up on. How present was Mexican regional music in your Texas upbringing?
God, we’re neighbors. So hearing those sounds come out of radios whizzing by or just in my environment in either my small town or in Fort Worth or Dallas, it’s definitely a very real part of Texas culture. The truth is Texas would not be Texas without Mexico in many ways. Though I’ve always been drawn to it, I’ve really been fortunate to get to really experience that first hand myself down there seeing a lot of the vaquero and rodeo culture and where it comes from. And seeing how far back it goes and seeing the direct influence that it has had as it’s worked its way into our Texas Western culture — I just have a lot of respect for it.
Whenever you really listen to traditional mariachi music and you listen to traditional country, the themes are the same, the instrumentation is quite largely the same. It’s coming from the same heart in the same place, just slightly different regions, and I wanted to really explore that kinship. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I spend half my life living in Mexico. That’s where I go to decompress, to reconnect with the physical world. I live in my head a lot and there’s a pace there that feels very down to earth. I think through osmosis, not only from just growing up where I did, but in my adult life being around that, I think it has just worked its way into the music.
We can follow the thread in your work from the Chilean folk song that you included on Star-Crossed to collaborations with Cuco, Carin Leon, paying tribute to Selena at the Houston Rodeo and playing with a mariachi band in Mexico City, and the way you’re incorporating Tejano textures on this album.
Mariachi music is their folkloric country, so to speak. It’s just so passionate and colorful and beautiful and full of emotion, and it’s sung with such gusto. I mean, when you’re singing those songs, you got to sound like you’re bleeding out on the ground. It’s a challenge for me, because I don’t sing like that in my own music. So learning some of those songs has pushed me to tap back into some of that more guttural singing with a bit more zest and meaning behind it, because if you deliver it chillaxed, it’s not going to translate.
In this modern time that we’re in, I really want to go an extra mile to really show the Mexican culture that I really deeply appreciate it, that I see it, and that it matters. And that it’s ultimately, in ways that I wasn’t even aware of, influenced me as a person, who I am and the music that I make today.
You’re about to do your first industry listening event for this album in Nashville, and I saw rodeo barrels and a longhorn bull on the premises. How are you presenting the visual aesthetic of this body of work?
It’s those pieces of Texas and country life that often get overlooked. It’s not trying to convince anyone that it is overly country or western, because that’s what can make something feel cliche. It’s just about finding those little elements that are so mundane that they’re so overlooked sometimes.
The album cover, my sister took those photos in Dallas one day, and haters are gonna say that that bull is AI, but it is definitely not. We had my friend Evan bring a bull from his ranch, and we just rode around Dallas and would quickly get out and try to block traffic with some cones. We had no permits or anything.
During this time period, I wound up in Austin one night and I went out to a super divey dance hall and there was a live country band playing. It was really nice to see so many different kinds of people having the best time decked out in their western wear. It was hot Latino couples, it was hot Black cowboys, it was older white cowboys dancing with younger cowgirls, and everybody was having such a good time dancing with each other. I was like, “Damn, America needs to two-step together. America needs to be on the dance floor.” It’s really a great equalizer, and it’s where your differences sort of melt away, and the one goal is to connect via music and have fun and move your body. It made me really inspired to infuse some of that Texas dance hall feeling and rhythms into the record.
Along with those Carin Leon and Cuco duets, you’ve done so many others that show how broad your musical interests are, from Zach Bryan to Miguel, Flaming Lips, Troye Sivan. On this album, it feels like the pairings with Willie Nelson on “Uncertain, TX” and Miranda Lambert on “Horses & Divorces.” What does teaming up with these other towering figures of Texas country music mean right now?
Sometimes I feel like country music is very eager to accept people from other genres partaking in our world. And the same lenience sometimes is not shown for people who have started or been rooted in country and are inspired to explore some of those same other genres.
Especially if those artists happen to be women. At least, that’s my observation.
Yes, 100%. It can be painted in some sort of traitor light. For me, no matter who I’m collabbing with, my viewpoint on it is that I’m bringing people to country. I’m not leaving anything. It’s bringing it to people that may not have known about it or known that they would actually like it in the first place.
I had to have Willie on this song. He’s like the patriarch of truth in so many ways. It was important for him to be the narrator, because that song, “Uncertain, TX,” while it is about a real town in East Texas, I had fun imagining that it’s this place where people can never really actually make up their minds. Is it a town full of f***boys where accountability is optional and you just swipe, swipe, swipe and slide to the next option? The song is an acknowledgement of that very transient modern dating behavior after what I went through, and the perfect person to help throw a little bit of shade to that is everybody’s favorite grandpa, Willie Nelson. He might even be a great-great-grandpa, but he’s also a gangster.
The collab with Miranda, there’s a whole story there.
I was aware that way back, when you were working on your first major label album, you’d written the song “Mama’s Broken Heart” and she wound up getting to record it for her album Four the Record instead.
Yeah. It was two singers from two nearby, small Texas towns. There’s a lot that comes with that. Then we each take our own different paths, both leading us to Nashville at different times. There was all this excitement behind “Mama’s Broken Heart” for me. It was gonna be my first single and I loved the song so much. I had been a staff writer for years at that point, writing for other people and had finally felt like I was collecting songs that felt like me that I didn’t wanna pitch to anyone else.
Then, the song gets pitched to her without my consent or knowledge. It was a tricky situation. She ended up loving the song and she really wanted it. And I had other co-writers to consider.
I knew I would have to go back to the drawing board. And ultimately, I’m really glad that I did, because it forced me to write “Merry Go Round,” which ended up making way more sense for me anyways, aesthetically and lyrically, to kick my whole thing off, versus “Mama’s Broken Heart.” And that ended up going No. 1 for her. So in the end, everyone won because I was able to let go of something.
We’d lost touch for years and wouldn’t consider each other friends. I saw her on Instagram one day, riding one of her horses, and I was like, “Well, we ain’t friends, but I guess we have two things in common, horses and divorces, that’s for sure. Wait, that could be a really funny song. What if it’s a duet with her? What if I got her to write on it?” I just randomly reached out to her and I was like, “I know we’ve had our s*** over the years, but listen, we’ve at least got two things in common. I’m not trying to be your friend. You got your life, I have mine. But I think this would be a pretty f****** funny song, and we should write it with Shane [McAnally].” And she was like, “Hell yeah, I’m in, let’s do it.” So it was very full circle in so many ways. We aired out any of the old laundry. We had some laughs and wrote the song in a matter of a few hours.
It is a pretty epic pairing.
I think it could be also a micro representation of what I wish that the world would do sometimes, just f****** sit down and poke fun at each other, have a beer and call it a day.
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