Kacey Musgraves’ Dry Spell: It’s A Desert, Out Here
Yesterday, country singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves graced the timeline with an announcement for her upcoming album, Middle of Nowhere, an exploration of independence and the liminality one discovers when they are truly alone. With just 49 days to go before it’ll be in our heavy rotation, for now we get to chew on a work of sarcastically amorous perfection otherwise known as the single, Dry Spell.
Kacey Musgraves - Dry Spell (Official Music Video)
First and foremost, the videographer in me begs to hear some commotion for the art direction. We open on a regular-schmegular grocery run, meeting a dressed-down-but-somehow-still-glamorous Kacey in the throes of a drought, if you catch her drift. The song itself addresses the hilarity and the humility of the loneliness epidemic. We all crave connection, yet we continue to starve; and what a beautifully chaotic juxtaposition to place this unmet desire for the higher purposes of love and connection against deep, carnal, bodily desires by placing us in a supermarket, one that also lends itself to plenty of allusions about the ins-outs-and-upside-downs about the “sexual marketplace,” as it were, perhaps making a subtle commentary on the transactional nature of situationships and the modern dating scene.
It’s an equally intriguing sample of Kacey Musgraves’ unmatched capacity to layer complexity under a wink and a nudge; something that I think to be a female songwriter’s sharpest tool, especially when it comes to the core message of the track: “yes, I’m horny but I’m also a-okay with myself, anyway.” In discussion with NPR regarding Middle of Nowhere, she confesses the upcoming album sprang from the longest period of time in her adult life that she’d been outside of a relationship. Through that experience came an appreciation for what she did have in her life, even if it meant going hungry for a bit.
“It’s powerful to know now that I don’t need anyone to be happy. Because now whatever I do choose to put back into my life.. it can be because it actually really serves me…”
Dry Spell is Kacey Musgraves at perhaps, her most candid. Her honesty is both refreshing and one of the most defining characteristics of her songwriting and her trajectory as an artist. After moving to Nashville in the early 2010’s and the success of her debut record, Same Trailer Different Park, controversy followed in the country scene over the song Follow Your Arrow. Its allusions to smoking marijuana and her free-spirited embrace of queerness lost her access to the airwaves of country radio, but earned the loyalty of LGBTQ fans who finally felt seen in the genre. Between then and now, it’s clearer than ever that Kacey Musgraves is undeniably Wavy.
Kacey Musgraves - Follow Your Arrow (Official Music Video)
As a music media outlet that prioritizes both diversity and artist integrity, it’s important to highlight Musgrave’s fervent attention to sharing the loving marriage that is traditional Mexican music and country. In her interview with NPR regarding the announcement of Middle of Nowhere, she teases us with an idea of the sonic motifs we can expect to hear from this record.
“In this modern time that we’re in, I really want to go an extra mile to really show the Mexican culture that I really deeply appreciate it, that I see it, and that it matters…A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I spend half my life living in Mexico. That’s where I go to decompress, to reconnect with the physical world…I think this album has a lot to do with borders.. because country shares fence lines with so many other styles. I’m really interested in [looking] where those two meet and then making something new.”
Perhaps one of the most exciting features about Middle of Nowhere is the collaboration pieces, including a reprisal of Musgrave’s long-time inspiration, collaborator and friend, Willie Nelson with Uncertain, TX as well as other tracks featuring Gregory Alan Isakov, Billy Strings, and the iconic Pistol Annie, Miranda Lambert. With how much promise this record holds after just a day-in on its announcement, you can bet we’ll be pacing the supermarket aisles these next 49 days in anticipation.
