\n<\/p>\n
\n\tKacey Musgraves<\/a> has traveled far and wide across her 14-year career. She shook up \u00adNashville\u2019s conservative values with her 2013 debut, Same Trailer Different Park<\/a>,<\/em> and became Music City\u2019s millennial provocateur. She has soared into the cosmos in search of \u201cgalactic country,\u201d and reached further into the pop sphere on 2021\u2019s synth-y Star-Crossed<\/a>.<\/em> On her last project, the singer came back down to Earth at last with the folky ruminations of Deeper Well<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tNow, on her seventh studio album, Middle of Nowhere,<\/em> Musgraves is letting the wind take her all the way back home, to a place where there\u2019s no cell service, bulls roam freely, and gorgeous pedal steel guitars are plentiful. Musgraves\u2019 chameleon soul is clearly her superpower, as none of those new terrains have ever felt wholly out of place for her. But it makes sense that this is where the dime-store cowgirl sounds most self-assured.<\/p>\n \n\tThe title track sums up Musgraves\u2019 state of mind. \u201cMiddle of Nowhere\u201d <\/em>doesn\u2019t just refer to a literal remote locale, it\u2019s also about the liminal chapter of her life, one where \u201cThere\u2019s no reckless men\/Who don\u2019t know what they want.\u201d Musgraves finds herself in small-town Texas with her arms wide open, \u201ctrying to lean in to the in-between\u201d of late-thirties singledom without shying away from the ghosts of shitty exes past who haunt her across these songs. Ever the sassy songwriter, Musgraves handles these specters like a pro with witty write-offs. \u201cI don\u2019t have to act like I like all your friends, or your mama,\u201d she deadpans on the breezy, banjo-inflected \u201cLoneliest Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tMusgraves\u2019 hard-won homecoming marks her best full-length release since 2018\u2019s Golden Hour<\/a>,<\/em> which went on to win an Album of the Year Grammy. The albums she\u2019s made in the intervening years were necessary swerves on the way to Middle of Nowhere.<\/em> On her new album, though, this once-and-future country queen leans back into the twangier sounds of her earliest releases to bring the spirit of her home state into focus.<\/p>\n