“I’m getting better at bein’ alone,” sings Kacey Musgraves on her seventh studio album, Middle of Nowhere. It’s her first release on Lost Highway since the label was revived last year, and it marks a clear return to country music, on which Musgraves made her name, starting with Same Trailer Different Park in 2013. The singer wrote the record during what she described as the longest period of being single in her life, and, as a result, became interested in the concept of liminal space, “both geographical and emotional”.
Sonically, Middle of Nowhere is the most classically country album Musgraves has released in over a decade. Lyrically, however, she still stands out as one of the genre’s biggest rebels. Musgraves homes in on the record’s theme of solitude and isolation on the title track, destined to be a future road trip classic: “No service on the phone and I’m alone, but it honestly feels good / And if you tried to call, I wouldn’t call you back even if I could.”
Where love and partnership, whether romantic or platonic, were central to the albums that brought Musgraves to mainstream popularity some eight years ago, she proves on Middle of Nowhere that she can be equally as fascinating when she’s flying solo, whether figuratively or literally. Ironically, on a record that prides itself on being single and alone, the singer relies on several collaborations throughout the LP, with country legends like Miranda Lambert and Willie Nelson, as well as folk singer Gregory Alan Isakov.
Although Musgraves has previously crafted songs surrounding the fear of missing out (FOMO), she seems to have discovered its joyful opposite experience on Middle of Nowhere. In “Loneliest Girl”, arguably the record’s best track, she sings about how she’s tired of holding other people’s emotions and pretending to like their friends and family: “No more anything that’s taking my energy / If I’m only doing it for company / I’d rather be the loneliest girl in the world.”
Conversely, she also sings about the experience of what she calls “lonely with a capital H” on the lead single “Dry Spell”, which illustrates the long period of singledom she says shaped the album: “Ain’t no new notches on my belt / And I’m tired of keeping my hands to myself / 911, it’s officially a cry for help.” Two different experiences can surely coexist, but these two are so directly at odds that the dissonance is a bit jarring.
Integrating both bluegrass and pop influences throughout Middle of Nowhere, it still stands as a country record through and through. Musgraves gets melancholy with Isakov about a former lover on “Coyote” ahead of her collaboration with Billy Strings on “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy”. The track contains some of the LP’s most subversive lyrics as the singer seemingly calls out posers who use and then dispose of a country western aesthetic: “Everybody wants to be a cowboy these days / Until it’s time to stay, until it’s time to stay.” Where typical country songs coming out of Nashville romanticize the cowboy/cowgirl image, Musgraves implores the listener to look deeper into the reality of things.
Likewise, in “Horses and Divorces”, her collaboration with Miranda Lambert, she imagines two women scorned bonding over the shared conundrum of being female: “I can’t believe we don’t share any exes / ‘Cause we both love cowboys and we’re both from Texas / We both love Willie, but I mean really / What asshole doesn’t like Willie?” Musgraves continues to turn the country narrative on its head not only by invoking girl power in a still male-dominated genre but by critiquing the very kind of music she proclaims to love while she’s making it.
Although the classic country production gives Middle of Nowhere a more conservative tone compared to Deeper Well or Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves nonetheless continues to create unified narratives that almost every listener can relate to, no matter their walk of life.