Kacey Musgraves was at an in-between before starting work on her seventh album. Between relationships, between record cycles and, as the country-pop star visited family in her hometown of Golden, Texas, literally “Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere” – or so a billboard told her as she passed it. That billboard has now given Middle of Nowhere its name, the record following Musgraves as she explores liminal spaces like these.
It’s yet another career-best offering, one that incorporates sounds from the Grammy winner’s current home in Mexico, as well as her Texan roots – think Spanish guitars, zydeco and bluegrass. While the title might suggest a sense of being stuck, she seems perfectly content where she is. Sure, there’s the hilarious “Dry Spell”, on which Musgraves laments her lack of a sex life over spaghetti western twangs of guitar (“It’s been a real long/ Three-hundred and thirty-five days/ And the last time/ It wasn’t good anyway”). But there’s also the luxuriously paced title track, steeped in slide guitar and dreamy, layered harmonies, which finds her revelling in the freedom of a world without schedules, without dating.
We last met Musgraves on her 2024 album Deeper Well, a resplendent collection of songs inspired by grief, heartbreak and toxic relationships. Just as that record’s psychedelic and Laurel Canyon influences lent it a philosophical, even uplifting tone, so too does the resolved, purposeful tempo on songs such as “I Believe in Ghosts” – in which she calls out an ex for disappearing without a word – and the curious reflection of “Coyote”, a warning about getting too close to something (or someone) that “can’t return the love”. Unlike Deeper Well, though, she’s renewed some of her old spikiness, wielding lyrics like a freshly sharpened chef’s knife.
In an interview with The Independent, to be published this Saturday, Musgraves explained that her most recent relationship was, she decided, the “last round” in which she’d repeat those unhealthy cycles. This led to her longest period of being single: “I really learned that being alone does not have to equal being lonely,” she said. On “Loneliest Girl”, then, she celebrates her solitude. Forget the dry spells, at least she doesn’t “have to act like I like all your friends… or your momma/ I don’t have to take on your childhood trauma/ I’m happy to be the loneliest girl in the world.” If there was ever an anthem for the purposely (happily) single, it’s this one.
That doesn’t mean Musgraves is against having company round. She duets with the man she describes as “everyone’s favourite gangster grandpa”, country legend Willie Nelson, on the rootsy “Uncertain, TX”, and mends a long-rumoured feud with fellow country queen Miranda Lambert on the outrageous “Horses and Divorces”. You picture them swaying in front of the track’s mariachi band, tequila shots in hand, as they chorus: “Hell just froze over/ ‘Cos we’re both at the bottom of the bottle… We got a few things in common/ Like horses and divorces, and we both like to drink/ Maybe in a way we’re more alike than we think.”
Musgraves excels at taking her sweet time – indeed, she’s confessed to her terminal lateness on songs such as 2018’s “Slow Burn”. When it comes to her music, it’s hard to resist her gentle urging to kick back with her, on the country-fried bop “Rhinestoned” or the unapologetically horny “Mexico Honey”. She makes peace with the past on closer “Hell on Me”, having addressed an old habit of changing herself in order to make someone else happy. Her voice is clear, pure and precise – delivered over deftly picked acoustic and swooning slide guitars – making each truth all the more devastating. Middle of Nowhere isn’t Musgraves at an impasse. No, she’s exactly where she needs to be.
