Golden Hour was a watershed moment, a masterclass in pop songwriting. Kacey Musgraves’ 2018 breakthrough album rightfully skyrocketed her star power. Her genre-blending paeans to love received widespread acclaim, upgraded her tour itinerary from theaters to arenas, and even snagged an Album of the Year Grammy. Following up on your crowning achievement is certainly a daunting task. Her post-Golden Hour output has yielded diminishing returns, from the glistening yet subdued divorce dalliance star-crossed to the occasionally trite astrological treatise Deeper Well. Middle of Nowhere functions similarly, failing to reach the mesmerizing heights of the country artist’s best work while never quite sinking to a dreadful nadir.
Middle of Nowhere, sonically, shares some DNA with its predecessor. Whereas 2021’s star-crossed shed Musgraves’ country roots wholesale, 2024’s Deeper Well embraced a subtle return in the form of a soft-rock palette. Middle of Nowhere differentiates itself by taking a more blatant turn for the twang, but its pristine production value, courtesy of her longtime co-producers and co-writers Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, prevents it from fully donning the homespun charm of Musgraves’ first two albums. Where we end up is somewhere transitional. It’s a style that’s as polished as Golden Hour but lacks the ingenuity. It’s witty like her debut but as rustic and innovative as a nouveau farm-to-table restaurant: there’s something for everyone, and the food’s pretty good, but nothing really reinvents the wheel.
On the cheeky lead single “Dry Spell,” Musgraves opts for sexual innuendo with one double entendre after another. “Ain’t nobody to roll with in the hay / And nobody but the chickens are getting laid,” goes one couplet. Winky raunchiness is de rigueur for the biggest pop stars these days, and Musgraves is hitching her wagon to that trend. It’s similar to how her Saturn return felt banal when a bunch of other pop stars also gestured toward the cosmos for transcendence by way of platitudes. For a musician who once shaped the fashions of pop and country music, Musgraves now seems content to ride in others’ wakes, culminating in a hackneyed point of view that doesn’t have the requisite charisma to offset its staleness. The lyrics are fun and clever at first listen, but quickly lose their novelty.
As a tribute to her native Texas, however, Middle of Nowhere is far more compelling. The warm splashes of pedal steel on the title track and “Back on the Wagon,” performed by Dan Dugmore and Paul Franklin, respectively, conjure the country coloring of Musgraves’ early days. Tashian’s plucky banjo on “Abilene” and Rob Burger’s trilling accordion on “Horses & Divorces” are vital forces that augment the songs’ lived-in settings. Musgraves’ syllable-heavy verses on the penultimate “Mexico Honey” slip off her tongue with the urgency of bottled-up feelings, as if she just can’t contain herself any longer and is ready to let it all spill out: “Let’s keep staying up all night / Holding on so tight / Smile even though I know I’m gonna / Cry when I gotta leave.”
When she coasts on clean-cut, shimmery pop, though, it’s often a less gripping iteration of well-worn ideas. “I Believe in Ghosts” sounds like bed music for an ad that used Tegan and Sara’s “Walking with a Ghost” as a reference track. “Loneliest Girl” is the heartbroken flipside of “Love Is a Wild Thing” minus the latter’s alluring panache. “Rhinestone” plateaus for all of its three-and-a-half minutes with complacent ennui, like cruise-controlling on a highway with no idyllic scenery to ameliorate the tedium. Middle of Nowhere is also Musgraves’ most feature-heavy album, some of which are better (and more discernible) than others. Gregory Alan Isakov’s background vocals on “Coyote” are, well, background vocals, and Billy Strings’ contributions to “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy” don’t add or detract anything worth noting.
She recruits two fellow Texans for the album’s two best songs. Her former opp Miranda Lambert’s appearance on “Horses & Divorces” is a fun ode to common ground (Texas, exes, etc.) that squashes years-old beef. “We both love Willie / But I mean really / What asshole doesn’t like Williiiieeeee,” the pair sing, their voices swirling together on that final held note, and you can practically see them burying the hatchet. And who shows up but Willie Nelson himself on the following track, “Uncertain, TX,” a smooth transition that carries over the spirited accordion and tacks on some twelve-string guitar and cowbell for good measure. “If you don’t know you’ve got it all / and your character is made of straw / you’re gonna blow away with the wind,” they duet, using an actual Texas town as a springboard to bemoan noncommittal romantic partners.
Some songs break up the drudgery, but Middle of Nowhere is mostly underwhelming because we know the unparalleled greatness that Musgraves is capable of. There’s nothing here that approaches the revelatory magnificence of Golden Hour, the vibrant tenor of Pageant Material, or the incisive storytelling of Same Trailer Different Park. Still, this is a Kacey Musgraves album. Even a lesser work of hers is decent enough. Sometimes staid and sometimes stirring, Middle of Nowhere finds her at a creative crossroads, in the middle of the road. [Lost Highway]
Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist, and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, NME, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City. You can follow him everywhere @grantsharpies.
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