It all comes out in the wash, as the saying goes, and that’s the upshot of Kacey Musgraves’ “Dry Spell,” which may be the sexiest song ever written about sexlessness. When asked for her favorite lyric on her new album, “Middle of Nowhere,” the singer doesn’t hesitate to cite a slyly bawdy line from the song.
“I’ve never talked about self-pleasure before,” she says. “So that’s a first for me: ‘Sitting on the washing machine.’ It’s not my grandma’s favorite line, but it’s mine, I guess.”
“It’s been a real long 335 days / And the last time, it wasn’t good anyway,” the full stanza goes. “I’m so lonely, lonely with a capital ‘H,’ if you know what I mean / I’ve been sitting on the washing machine.”
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Does Grandma — the same one who “cried when I pierced my nose” in Musgraves’ 2018 song “Slow Burn” — know what that means?
“She does — although she hasn’t seen the video yet,” says Musgraves, referring to the clip’s setting in a supermarket filled with phallic fruit. “I don’t know if she’ll laugh. Actually, in the middle of filming the video, I got a text from my dad that Nana had to be rushed to the hospital: She had a really scary extreme high blood pressure incident. So I had to leave and I was on the call, crying, like, ‘If Nana lives, she’s gonna hate this video!’”
Thankfully, the video was spared a dark subtext. “She’s doing great — I saw her this morning,” says Musgraves, who is lounging on a crisp white couch in a West Hollywood hotel suite but began this long day back in Golden, the tiny East Texas town where she was born and raised — a place very familiar with dry spells.
On the day the song was written, it really had been 335 days since she’d last gotten lucky (satisfyingly or otherwise), and she stuck to that lyric, although the number had grown by the time she recorded it. “The dry spell was broken at a certain point. It did cross the year threshold — a year and a half, maybe?” She picks up her phone. “Siri, how many days are in a year and a half?” The answer is 547 days, which she says could figure into the lyric when she performs it live.
Although abstinence is presented in a comically frustrated light, there were real undertones to her thoughts about the conundrum of whether or not Maytag might beat having a man around.
“I feel like most people are trying to convince you how much they’ve got going on in that department, and I just wanted to let people know how little I had going on,” Musgraves says, growing more serious. “It can get really comfortable and easy to stay that way, because you start feeling really protective of bringing transient energy in. Like, ‘I’m really peaceful right now. This may or may not make anything better.’ But then you’re like, ‘Ugh, but I wanna have some fun.’ You really start weighing out: Is it worth it?”
“Dry Spell” represents the lighter side of themes explored throughout “Middle of Nowhere,” the country crossover artist’s sixth studio album (out May 1) and third since “Golden Hour,” which won the Grammy for album of the year in 2019 and lofted Musgraves, now 37, into a higher stratum of stardom. She burst onto the scene in 2013 with one of the most acclaimed country debuts of all time, “Same Trailer, Different Park,” an album that wore wizened influences ranging from Loretta Lynn to John Prine on its youthful sleeve. Before long, she joined Chris Stapleton as the kind of once-or-twice-in-a-generation country artist who transcends Nashville ties and insinuates their way into the hearts and collections of music fans who otherwise rarely touch the stuff. Expanding her palette in a big way with “Golden Hour,” she reached for, and achieved, a kind of genre-lessness.
Now, “Middle of Nowhere” indisputably represents a re-embrace of country — on her terms, as always. She’s posing fearlessly with actual bulls on the cover, and steel guitars appear on most of the tracks (most often played by Nashville legend Paul Franklin). It provides a bed for Musgraves at her real-est and occasionally at her cheekiest, as she has a lot to get off her chest, even as she dons a cowboy hat for the first time in a while.
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The album was written during what she says was the first instance in her adult life when she was single for an extended period of time, following a bruising split from writer Cole Schafer and, previously, a nearly three-year marriage to singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly that ended in 2020. The novelty, for her, of being in a relationship nowheresville befitted the album’s titular concept. But the title literally came from a sign she saw recently in her Texas hometown (population: just under 300).
“I had been going through a breakup and I really needed to feel grounded, and I had all this time and space around me. So I went down there, and someone had put up this sign in the middle of the town which literally said, ‘Golden, Texas: Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere.’ It made me laugh, and I was just like, OK, that’s obviously meant to be a little bit self-deprecating, but there was this quiet confidence about it that I really liked.
“It’s a wormhole I can get really nerdy about, but the concept of liminal space is really interesting to me. They’re usually places that are transitional and meant for passing through, like airport terminals and hallways. I’ve been in this period of learning how to be a single adult for the first time, really, in my adult life, so this was freaky for me. It was kind of like, ‘Oh God, I’m by myself,’ but I really learned how to lean into that: You’re in this weird hallway between what you’re sure about and what you can’t see. That would’ve freaked me out at any other time, but this time I was like, wait, what if it’s awesome that I don’t know? I let myself hang out in uncomfortability, and I ended up getting totally fucking obsessed with it.”
It became a time of adventure for her geographically as well, as she set up a third home (beyond her twin bases in Golden and Nashville) in Mexico, where she spent much of the past year. “Is home a place?” she asks. “I don’t know that it is. I think it’s more a feeling that you carry in you.”
But there’s no place like the home that is country music. And in that, “Middle of Nowhere” feels very grounded. It’s in large part a return to the traditional country sounds that were a hallmark of “Same Trailer, Different Park” and its successor, “Pageant Material,” before she moved on to a dreamier folk-pop style with “Golden Hour”; it even features a surprise duet with country superstar and former frenemy Miranda Lambert (more on that shortly). Musgraves worked with co-writers-producers Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk for the fourth album in a row, but this time half the songs were co-written with that team, while the remainder reunited her with co-writers from her first couple of albums, like Nashville hitmakers Shane McAnally, Luke Laird and Josh Osbourne.
The humor in her lyrics is back as well, but with less of the countrypolitan camp of the early albums. “I really love camp,” she proclaims. “But I made a conscious choice to pivot from that, because I didn’t want to be a bumper-sticker songwriter, you know?” Taking a turn for the serious with “Golden Hour” and the albums that followed was a necessary pivot toward a less showily clever style of writing — rooted in true romance, then divorce (on 2021’s “Star Crossed”), then, with her most recent album, more of a journey into wellness.
“I do think that ‘Deeper Well’ was super introspective, therapeutic a bit and borderline serious, maybe,” she says. “I purposely wanted to lean a little bit away from that, and have more fun with phrasing and humor, which a lot of my earlier songs used to do. It’s been fun to play with that again, because I love laughing, and I really feel like America also needs to laugh.”
Room service arrives at Musgraves’ suite, and it’s a beef kebab. After flying in from Texas, she’s earned this “breakfast,” which is her first meal of the day despite the late-afternoon hour: As soon as she checked into her hotel, she went straight to the gym, and is still wearing her workout clothes beneath the camo hoodie she sports in the “Dry Spell” music video. The only touch of glam is a pair of glittery silver shoes, which she had to wear while working out because she forgot to pack more practical sneakers.
Speaking of beef: There is the tantalizing fact that the new album includes a duet with Lambert: The two were perceived to be in some kind of extended feud, or at least an estrangement, going back an unlucky 13 years or so. As the lore went, Musgraves was peeved because she had been talked into handing over “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which as a freshman artist she had pegged as her own breakout single, to Lambert, who had yet another smash hit with it. This was a boost to Musgraves’ bankroll and reputation in the industry as a topflight songwriter, but still, some echoes of stolen thunder resonated, and Musgraves was left to premiere her own project with the ballad “Merry Go Round”… which was a career maker, if not the smash hit “Mama’s” had been banked as. A video clip from the CMA Awards that year achieved some virality: It showed Musgraves with an I’m-not-having-it look on her face as Lambert thanked her from the stage.
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Does the presence of a Lambert duet on the new album mean that there was no beef between these two country greats after all?
“Oh, there was,” Musgraves confirms. “It was grass-fed, grade A.”
She pauses before continuing, “I mean, it’s real and that’s why I love this song, because it’s not coming from some contrived place in a writing room. We’ve come together after years of really, honestly, not being friends. I had this idea one day when I saw her on Instagram, riding one of her horses, and I thought, ‘Well, I guess we have two things in common: horses and divorces.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, that’s a song.’ Then I took it a step further: ‘What if I write it with her? What if it’s a duet? Fuck it, I’m gonna reach out.’ I hadn’t spoken to her in years and was like, ‘Hey, I have this idea. If anybody would get it, it would be you. We’ve had our shit over the years, but this would be really funny.’ And she was like, ‘I’m down.’
“I was like, ‘Look, I’m not trying to be your friend, but we should write this song at least.’ So it was a late addition, the last song added” to the album, which wrapped up in January.
Musgraves and Lambert are two of the most important figures in country music in the 21st century, so the pairing would have been historic even without the beefy backstory. McAnally is friends with both singers and became the sounding board for their writing session.
“I’ll never forget where I was standing when Kacey called me and said, ‘I have this idea to write a song with Miranda,’” he recalls. “She said, ‘One, do you think it’s a good idea? Two, do you think she’ll do it?’ My heart was beating so fast because I’m a crazy country music fan, and these two women are my Dolly and Loretta. And they both switched roles; I’m not saying who is who, but there was no ego in it. They have so much respect for each other, and I got to be a part of what I really do believe is history. She texted Miranda, they got on the phone and Miranda said, ‘I love this idea and I think we have to write it with Shane, because if we don’t, he’ll never forgive us.’”
There was forgiveness to spare in the room. “In our writing session, Miranda said, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t have the career that I have without that song, and I’m really grateful for it,’” Musgraves recalls. “So it was very full circle” — after, admittedly, a pretty long frost. “It was a plot twist that even I did not see coming, so it really surprised me too. We talked about everything, and we’re both older now and have less energy for dumb shit. I don’t love having weirdness with anyone out there.”
Musgraves and Lambert bonded over something else in their duet, beyond horse riding prowess and marital horror stories. “We both love Willie,” they sing, “but I mean, really … what asshole doesn’t like Willie?” And after Nelson’s mention in that song, who should show up in the very next track on the album — almost “breaking the fourth wall,” Musgraves laughs — but Nelson himself? The legend appears on “Uncertain, Texas,” which, unlikely as it sounds, is named after an actual town.
“Uncertain might take the cake for being even smaller than where I’m from,” she says. “I think the population was like 98 people at one point. But I just had fun thinking about it being this real place where nobody can make up their mind. I was like, is that where all the fuckboys go?”— she laughs — “because no one can make up their mind in this modern world where accountability’s optional and options are endless.”
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No fuckboy could stand a chance, anyway, pitted against Nelson as her backup. “He is our favorite Texan, the patriarch of truth in storytelling and everybody’s favorite gangster grandpa,” she says of her longtime pal. “I was like, I want Willie to help me throw a little bit of shade.”
Tashian, her co-writer and co-producer, thinks Musgraves’ Texas authenticity stands out in a world of exurban country. “I think country’s quite fashionable nowadays, and you see a lot of people putting on hats and stuff — there’s a lot of cosplay, right?” he says. “She references that in the new song ‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy.’ Part of this is sort of a response of like, ‘Well, I really am country, and I’ve been out riding my horse all day, and now I’m gonna write a song and let you know that side of it.’”
McAnally says Musgraves’ less overtly country albums, from “Golden Hour” through “Deeper Well,” make her return to this particular well more precious. “I actually think it makes this moment better,” he says, “for people to have been down those other roads with her, but also be anticipating when she would sort of return to form. If you watch her onstage, if you hear her in interviews, she just seems like she wants to have a good time right now.”
And there will be ample opportunities to see her do just that when the “Middle of Nowhere Tour” tour launches August 21, bringing her to such not-exactly-nowhere places as Madison Square Garden and L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, where she’ll be doing two-night stands. She previewed the tour with a late-announced set on Coachella’s second weekend, which saw her riding a horse to the side of the stage and playing new songs and country classics by George Strait and Brooks & Dunn; her set featured a bespoke horse trailer and other country accoutrements. The forthcoming tour will be quite different from her special-effects-laden, screen-filled “Deeper Well Tour.” “I want it to feel like you’re walking into an outdoor rodeo when you’re in there,” she says. “There’s gonna be dirt, and it’ll feel like you’re outside.”
The tour’s lighthearted look may contrast with the heaviness of some of the album’s subject matter, as heard in songs like “Coyotes” (about animals who “live on the fringe of human activity” but “get defensive if you get too close,” like some fellows she’s known) and “I Believe in Ghosts” (about, yes, being ghosted). But they all illustrate what she’s moving past, and that this ain’t her first rodeo.
“We’re preloaded with all these factory settings, I think from our childhood, that kind of navigate us to choose the same archetypes,” she says, pondering the relationship history that informed the new album’s serious moments. “For some reason, it’s me convincing the person that I’m with that they like me. I’m like, why does this keep happening? I think I’ve finally gotten the fuck out of that, and I think I’ve gained the confidence of knowing that I don’t need to chase anybody. I will not waste time on that again.
“But in a way, I hope I always have things to learn, because, honestly, it’s where my songs come from. I can’t have it all figured out. So in the end, I’m always grateful for the pain, even though it hurts, because I’m so inspired by the human experience. It’s real fucked up, but also funny. There’s a lot to laugh about.”
Makeup: Moani Lee; Hair: Giovanni Delgado; Styling: Maddie Louviere; Look 1 (cover): Hat: Serratelli Hat Company; Tank: Hanes; Jacket: New Arrivals; Look 2 (roses): Full look: Carolina Herrera; Shoes: Tony Bianco; Earrings: Ettika; Look 3 (seated): Top and pants: Ralph Lauren; Shoes: Stuart Weitzman; Ring: Lady Grey Jewelry