Kacey Musgraves to release a new album, ‘Middle of Nowhere’ : NPR

The sounds of conventional nation music “are baked into what feels like home to me,” Musgraves says. Her sixth album, Middle of Nowhere, can be launched on May 1, 2026.

Kelly Christine Sutton

disguise caption

toggle caption

Kelly Christine Sutton

Kacey Musgraves opens her new tune “Dry Spell” with fairly the criticism. “It’s been a real long 335 days,” she sings, elongating the phrase “real” in sly exasperation. “And the last time, it wasn’t good anyway.”

That’s when one of essentially the most admired nation singer-songwriters to obtain arena-headlining standing this century shifts her focus from bemoaning how a lot time has handed since her final hookup to reeling off essentially the most entertaining string of down-home double entendres for unmet want in latest reminiscence. “I’m so lonely, lonely with a capital ‘H,’ if you know what I mean,” she insists, with a deadpan suggestiveness that is accentuated within the music video. “I’ve been sitting on the washing machine.” By the tip of the cunningly pensive monitor and the accompanying clip, set in a dreary grocery retailer and co-directed by Musgraves and Hannah Lux Davis, she’s turned an array of nation cohabitation tropes on their heads and stared a little too lengthy, and longingly, on the ripe produce on show.

The first single from Musgraves’ sixth album, Middle of Nowhere, indicators the tip of a totally different variety of drought. She received her begin in a folksy, multigenerational, tradition-steeped scene in distant East Texas earlier than sharpening her songcraft and simply distinguishing herself within the fratty Nashville of the early 2010s. The witty wordplay and artfully kitschy use of hand-played devices 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 — throughout the luminous reveries of Golden Hour, the cinematic Star-Crossed and the pastoral questing of Deeper Well — appeared needed. How higher to fulfill her stressed creativeness, and concurrently welcome new waves of genre-agnostic listeners into her viewers? Along the best way, she additionally managed to decouple her deep affection for nation music’s settings, signifiers and varieties from any lingering, or limiting, sense of obligation to its business gatekeepers.

Middle of Nowhere, scheduled to be launched on May 1, will stand as Musgraves’ gorgeous return: to Lost Highway Records, the reactivated, roots-leaning label that initially signed her, solely to be absorbed into Nashville main label system earlier than she launched her debut; to her incisive contemplation of small-town environs, which now function a backdrop for her inquiries into grown-up solitude; and to arid, Western textures that intensify that panorama and hint its borderlands with Mexico. Musgraves has chosen visitor performers, together with Gregory Alan Isakov, Billy Strings, Willie Nelson and Miranda Lambert — with whom she shares a good-naturedly salty, long-time-coming duet referred to as “Horses and Divorces” — that reaffirm her place in nation lineage. But it is the gathered perception Musgraves brings to the work that makes it a complete new landmark.

She sat down with NPR Music in Nashville for the unique first interview on Middle of Nowhere and the mindset that formed it.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Jewly Hight: “Dry Spell” appears like one thing that might have come out of a actually free and unguarded group textual content. But however, it’s extremely well-crafted as a tune. How’d it take form?

Kacey Musgraves: I usually all the time have been in relationships. This was the longest interval in my grownup life the place I used to be alone, and I had gone by way of a break up. I used to be taking inventory of my relationships and what I need[ed] in my life, and actually studying how to lean into being alone. I began actually loving my singledom.

It was a very long time with none intimacy with anybody else, and I had all the time feared that earlier than I skilled it, simply having this notion that I wanted somebody to be completely satisfied, which I discovered to be utterly unfaithful.

I wrote the title down — “Dry Spell” — and since [it was what I was] going by way of. I wrote most of this report within the longest single interval of my life. And it was actually enjoyable to be again within the room with so many of my previous collaborators and buddies, Shane [McAnally], Josh Osborne, Luke Laird. Nobody does humor higher than these guys, and I used to be craving humor once more. That was a massive half of earlier albums, after which I perhaps purposefully steered away from that, simply so I did not paint myself into some type of bumper sticker lane. And then life occurs: There’s a divorce album, Golden Hour is its personal factor. Deeper Well is fairly introspective, variety of calm and therapeutic. And then now we’re right here.

I actually cannot suppose of many, or perhaps even any, different examples of a nation artist who’s a girl writing about thirstiness, want, with out even mentioning a male protagonist. How about you? 

No, I do not suppose so. I feel a lot of songs, persons are attempting to persuade you of how attractive they’re, and I’m telling you the way I’ve not been getting any. Even the chickens are getting laid, and I’m not.

Listening to “Dry Spell” made me suppose of while you launched “Merry Go Round,” “It Is What It Is,” “Follow Your Arrow” — these songs the place you are conveying sentiments in a low-key, matter-of-fact approach that sounds utterly pure coming from you, however lands on this barely transgressive approach within the context of nation music. You have had a knack for doing that. What do you suppose it’s about your voice as a author and a vocalist that has made that a factor?

I discover the human situation fairly hilarious. I really feel just like the universe has a fairly killer sense of humor, so I simply discover a lot of humor within the on a regular basis. One of my all-time favourite writers did it greatest: John Prine. I might be fairly introspective and perhaps heady or no matter, however I actually love anchoring one thing with that [sense of humor]. I really feel like we’d like to snigger extra on this fashionable loopy time.

It would not land the best way that it does, would not be as profitable or as humorous, in the event you did not ship it the best way you do. Timing and supply is so vital to comedy.

It began as a result of I knew I’m not a textbook singer, like, finger on the ear, finger waving within the air, Mariah Carey-style. I do not contemplate myself that sort of vocalist, so I like to rely extra on the subtleties.

I really like restraint in artwork and I feel it is onerous to do, particularly in manufacturing. I feel a lot of folks love loading up a monitor with as a lot as potential. I simply do not feel impressed by that. I really like for there to be room to breathe and a few destructive area in there. I feel with the supply of the lyrics or the melody, there has to be that very same type of strategy. I’m not convincing anybody of something. It’s there if you’d like it and it is nice in the event you do not.

I questioned what’s interesting about returning your focus to a small city setting when you’ll be able to carry all of the perception you’ve got gathered to it.

I feel it is a little bit of that, but it surely’s additionally simply discovering myself being completely okay on this proverbial “middle of nowhere.” And that may apply to many various issues. It might be how you are feeling relationally or emotionally. It could possibly be somebody in between jobs. It might be between relationships and even geographically talking. I do come from the quote “middle of nowhere.” The title monitor for the report and the overall idea of it got here from being on this very singular interval exploring my roots once more like the place I’m from in Texas, spending time there and getting again into horseback using and all this stuff. It was on a little journey to my hometown the place I simply was wandering round — there’s not a lot there — and I had observed this signal that somebody had put up there that I had by no means observed earlier than. It simply says, “Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere.” And I liked that it was a bit self-deprecating but additionally variety of assured within the sense that it is like, “We know what we are and we own it.” It made an impression on me. I received actually obsessive about the idea of liminal area.

Liminal areas are outlined because the transitional area from in between a Point A and a Point B, usually not designed to truly hand around in. And if we’re talking about a bodily area, they’re often stuffed with folks. We’re speaking, like, airport terminals, the place you’re meant to cross by way of. There’s an eeriness to them, and a nostalgia, a little bit. I really feel actually drawn to these locations. For some cause, we’re all the time dashing to outline ourselves within the subsequent factor, whether or not it is a job or relationship or no matter. And I simply actually liked accepting that I used to be on this literal center of nowhere in lots of senses. I discovered a lot of readability there. It’s such a fertile breeding floor for something that is coming subsequent.

“I think this album has a lot to do with borders,” Musgraves says of Middle of Nowhere. “The truth is Texas would not be Texas without Mexico in many ways.”

Kelly Christine Sutton

disguise caption

toggle caption

Kelly Christine Sutton

You have been speaking about going by way of a single section, however I feel you deserve credit score for extra than simply literal reportage on what was happening in your relational life. To me, one of the overarching themes of the album is aloneness and isolation, but it surely’s actually worlds away from “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Listeners usually are not going to hear you pining for somebody or wallowing in heartbreak. You are exploring wounds of absence, but additionally making all this room for reflection.

It’s highly effective to know now that I do not want anybody to be completely satisfied. Because now no matter I do select to put again into my life, whether or not it is buddies, alternatives, relationships, it may be as a result of it truly actually serves me, as a result of now I do know I’m freaking good with out it. So there’s a confidence that comes with that, variety of a readability.

There is that this notion that I’m positive you’ve got encountered, that conventional nation music is straightforward in execution and sentiment. You have leaned additional into that aspect of your sensibilities than at any time since your Texas Two Bits child yodeling days, and made music that carries emotional complexity and captures ambiguity and ambivalence. How did you select the sonic palette that might swimsuit the album’s perspective?

I really like conventional nation music. It would possibly sound cliche, however when I’m in a interval of disappointment or heartbreak, I actually do flip to old-fashioned nation music, the standard aspect of the style. It’s so comforting as a result of it is all miserable songs about being heartbroken. So you are feeling very seen.

I grew up singing Western swing, yodeling — very conventional nation music. Those sounds are baked into what appears like dwelling to me. And so exploring them would not really feel like I’m attempting on a hat that does not match. It simply appears like half of me. It’s all the time there to a point, but it surely felt good this time to actually lean into it. For me it is all the time about discovering the stability. If a lyric goes in that course actually onerous, perhaps the monitor is not, so it is by no means too on the nostril.

In the studio, they name me “the ax man” as a result of we’ll load up a monitor with all these manufacturing components, and my favourite factor to do is get in there and simply one after the other begin muting issues to see the place the proper stability is and what crosses the road a little an excessive amount of in phrases of style or area. I really like the eraser device. It’s virtually like I can really feel the stability in my physique when I’m listening to one thing. The structure of the factor is absolutely vital to me.

You’ve cultivated these two actually intimate circles of collaborators, first, writing and recording with Shane McAnally and Luke Laird primarily.

And Brandy Clark, Josh Osborne, Natalie Hemby.

And then, starting within the Golden Hour period, working with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. You enlisted each of these groups to write this new materials with you, and also you employed Tashian and Fitchuk as your co-producers and first band. How did you make the most of the specialties you’ve got developed collectively?

Both crews have totally different robust factors. I’ll all the time love what I’ve carried out with Daniel and Ian. They are true musicians by way of and thru. [But] I used to be craving some of the chew that I can obtain with some of these different folks for this factor particularly. And it was simply enjoyable. There was no urgent deadline or something. So I used to be similar to, “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 feel it is gonna be actually tempting for a lot of folks to say that it is a return for me. I agree with some of that. I’ve by no means taken some stand saying I’m leaving nation. It’s a large half of me. I do not suppose I might shake it if I even wished to.

I revisited the primary sit-down that we did again in 2013, and it struck me that your publicists have been pushing you to speak about your appreciation for the Nashville business group. At least again then, you have been anticipated to present your devotion to the nation music business itself. That looks like a separate matter out of your relationship to the musical custom of nation music itself. How have been you ready to differentiate between the 2?

Moving to Nashville again in 2008, it utterly modified my life. I feel it was the very best transfer I ever made. I’ve a deep respect for the group right here. That has by no means modified. That being stated, I would not need to be beholden by that both. So whereas I’ve continued to respect and nonetheless very a lot do and really feel half of it, I’ve all the time simply wished to make it possible for the one compass I’m following is the one which feels proper to me, whether or not that is sensible to the remaining of the group or not.

That’s precisely the sort of unencumbered mentality that I’ve picked up on.

I’ve seen folks try to pretzel themselves into the perfect of the shifting goal, and it simply doesn’t bode nicely for them. They would possibly get fortunate and strike gold and have a second with that, however on the finish of the day, they do not actually have that basis to fall again on that has actually let folks know who they’re. I feel I used to be scared from an early age of getting trapped in that.

How you situate your music geographically has all the time been vital, starting with depicting this small-town Texas world, and difficult simplistic portraits of it [before] pulling in components of Hollywood with Star-Crossed, after which with Deeper Well shifting into a totally different variety of pastoral area, extra Greenwich Village city folks revival. What is interesting to you about returning your creativeness to small-town Texas?

For me, sonically, it is all the time about exploring the borders of nation music. I feel this album has a lot to do with borders, and truthfully, [so does] each album of mine, as a result of nation shares fence traces with so many different kinds. I’m actually serious about [looking] the place these two meet after which making one thing new. I really like bluegrass and there is a little bit of that breezy ’70s, ’80s, ’90s nation that I really like a lot after which there’s additionally a lane the place nation meets conventional Mexican music, norteno and even zydeco down in Louisiana. So in a approach, I do not suppose the report is any totally different than anything I’ve carried out, but it surely does lean a little tougher into the nation palette.

You talked about the Western swing that you just got here up on. How current was Mexican regional music in your Texas upbringing?

God, we’re neighbors. So listening to these sounds come out of radios whizzing by or simply in my surroundings in both my small city or in Fort Worth or Dallas, it is undoubtedly a very actual half of Texas tradition. The fact is Texas wouldn’t be Texas with out Mexico in some ways. Though I’ve all the time been drawn to it, I’ve actually been lucky to get to actually expertise that first hand myself down there seeing a lot of the vaquero and rodeo tradition and the place it comes from. And seeing how far again it goes and seeing the direct affect that it has had because it’s labored its approach into our Texas Western tradition — I simply have a lot of respect for it.

Whenever you actually pay attention to conventional mariachi music and also you pay attention to conventional nation, the themes are the identical, the instrumentation is kind of largely the identical. It’s coming from the identical coronary heart in the identical place, simply barely totally different areas, and I wished to actually discover that kinship. Quite a bit of folks do not know this about me, however I spend half my life residing in Mexico. That’s the place I’m going to decompress, to reconnect with the bodily world. I dwell in my head a lot and there is a tempo there that feels very down to earth. I feel by way of osmosis, not solely from simply rising up the place I did, however in my grownup life being round that, I feel it has simply labored its approach into the music.

We can comply with the thread in your work from the Chilean folks tune that you just 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 best way you are incorporating Tejano textures on this album. 

Mariachi music is their folkloric nation, so to converse. It’s simply so passionate and colourful and exquisite and full of emotion, and it is sung with such gusto. I imply, while you’re singing these songs, you bought to sound such as you’re bleeding out on the bottom. It’s a problem for me, as a result of I do not sing like that in my very own music. So studying some of these songs has pushed me to faucet again into some of that extra guttural singing with a bit extra zest and which means behind it, as a result of in the event you ship it chillaxed, it is not going to translate.

In this contemporary time that we’re in, I really need to go an additional mile to actually present the Mexican tradition that I actually deeply respect it, that I see it, and that it issues. And that it is finally, in ways in which I wasn’t even conscious of, influenced me as a individual, who I’m and the music that I make immediately.

The cowl artwork for Kacey Musgraves’ album Middle of Nowhere

Courtesy of Lost Highway Records

disguise caption

toggle caption

Courtesy of Lost Highway Records

You’re about to do your first business listening occasion for this album in Nashville, and I noticed rodeo barrels and a longhorn bull on the premises. How are you presenting the visible aesthetic of this physique of work?

It’s these items of Texas and nation life that always get ignored. It’s not attempting to persuade anybody that it’s overly nation or western, as a result of that is what could make one thing really feel cliche. It’s nearly discovering these little components which are so mundane that they are so ignored generally.

The album cowl, my sister took these images in Dallas in the future, and haters are gonna say that that bull is AI, however it’s undoubtedly not. We had my buddy Evan carry a bull from his ranch, and we simply rode round Dallas and would shortly get out and check out to block visitors with some cones. We had no permits or something.

During this time interval, I wound up in Austin one evening and I went out to a tremendous divey dance corridor and there was a dwell nation band taking part in. It was very nice to see so many various varieties of folks having the very best time decked out of their western put on. It was sizzling Latino {couples}, it was sizzling Black cowboys, it was older white cowboys dancing with youthful cowgirls, and everyone was having such a good time dancing with one another. I used to be like, “Damn, America needs to two-step together. America needs to be on the dance floor.” It’s actually a nice equalizer, and it is the place your variations type of soften away, and the one aim is to join through music and have enjoyable and transfer your physique. It made me actually impressed to infuse some of that Texas dance corridor feeling and rhythms into the report.

Along with these Carin Leon and Cuco duets, you’ve got carried out so many others that present how broad your musical pursuits are, from Zach Bryan to Miguel, Flaming Lips, Troye Sivan. On this album, it feels just like the pairings with Willie Nelson on “Uncertain, TX” and Miranda Lambert on “Horses & Divorces.” What does teaming up with these different towering figures of Texas nation music imply proper now?

Sometimes I really feel like nation music could be very keen to settle for folks from different genres partaking in our world. And the identical lenience generally just isn’t proven for individuals who have began or been rooted in nation and are impressed to discover some of those self same different genres.

Especially if these artists occur to be girls. At least, that is my statement. 

Yes, 100%. It might be painted in some type of traitor gentle. For me, regardless of who I’m collabbing with, my viewpoint on it’s that I’m bringing folks to nation. I’m not leaving something. It’s bringing it to folks that will not have recognized about it or recognized that they’d truly prefer it within the first place.

I had to have Willie on this tune. He’s just like the patriarch of fact in so some ways. It was vital for him to be the narrator, as a result of that tune, “Uncertain, TX,” whereas it’s about a actual city in East Texas, I had enjoyable imagining that it is this place the place folks can by no means actually truly make up their minds. Is it a city full of f***boys the place accountability is optionally available and also you simply swipe, swipe, swipe and slide to the subsequent possibility? The tune is an acknowledgement of that very transient fashionable relationship habits after what I went by way of, and the proper individual to assist throw a little bit of shade to that’s everyone’s favourite grandpa, Willie Nelson. He would possibly even be a great-great-grandpa, however he is additionally a gangster.

The collab with Miranda, there’s a complete story there.

I used to be conscious that approach again, while you have been working in your first main label album, you’d written the tune “Mama’s Broken Heart” and he or she wound up getting to record it for her album Four the Record as a substitute.

Yeah. It was two singers from two close by, small Texas cities. There’s a lot that comes with that. Then we every take our personal totally different paths, each main us to Nashville at totally different instances. There was all this pleasure behind “Mama’s Broken Heart” for me. It was gonna be my first single and I liked the tune a lot. I had been a workers author for years at that time, writing for different folks and had lastly felt like I used to be amassing songs that felt like me that I did not wanna pitch to anybody else.

Then, the tune will get pitched to her with out my consent or information. It was a tough state of affairs. She ended up loving the tune and he or she actually wished it. And I had different co-writers to contemplate.

I knew I’d have to return to the drafting board. And finally, I’m actually glad that I did, as a result of it compelled me to write “Merry Go Round,” which ended up making far more sense for me anyhow, aesthetically and lyrically, to kick my complete factor off, versus “Mama’s Broken Heart.” And that ended up going No. 1 for her. So in the long run, everybody received as a result of I used to be ready to let go of one thing.

We’d misplaced contact for years and would not contemplate one another buddies. I noticed her on Instagram in the future, using one of her horses, and I used to be 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 simply randomly reached out to her and I used to be 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 some ways. We aired out any of the previous laundry. We had some laughs and wrote the tune in a matter of a few hours.

It is a fairly epic pairing.

I feel it could possibly be additionally a micro illustration of what I want that the world would do generally, simply f****** sit down and poke enjoyable at one another, have a beer and name it a day.