New Kacey Musgraves music is on the way. The eight-time Grammy Award winner surprised fans earlier this week with “Dry Spell”, the lead single off her forthcoming sixth album, Middle of Nowhere. Out May 1, Middle of Nowhere promises a return to the East Texan’s country roots—as evidenced by the album cover, which shows Musgraves standing on a lonely street corner, sporting a white tank top, cowboy hat, and jeans—with only a Texas longhorn for company. As the “Golden Hour” singer put it in an interview with NPR, “haters are gonna say that that bull is AI, but it is definitely not.”
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Kacey Musgraves Stopped Traffic in Dallas to Get the Perfect Shot
The story behind Kacey Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere album cover is as Texan as anything I’ve ever heard. In this case, she and the photographer—her sister—decided it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
“We had my friend Evan bring a bull from his ranch, and we just rode around Dallas and would quickly get out and try to block traffic with some cones,” Musgraves said. “We had no permits or anything.”
She Wants Listeners “To Laugh More”
In many ways, Middle of Nowhere marks a homecoming for Kacey Musgraves. It’s her first album under the newly revived Lost Highway Records, where she originally signed in 2011.
Unfortunately, Lost Highway would fold into Mercury Nashville the very next year with the retirement of its founder, Luke Lewis. Last year, Interscope Records relaunched it with Musgraves as its first artist.
Selecting “Dry Spell” as the album’s lead single also feels intentional. Musgraves sounds like she’s barely concealing a smirk as she sings, Ain’t nobody’s tool up in my shed / Ain’t nobody’s boots undеr my bed. (As she puts it, “Even the chickens are getting laid, and I’m not.”)
[RELATED: Kacey Musgraves Opens up About Finding Happiness While Being Alone]
The playful, innuendo-laden track feels like a callback to the witty wordplay of her 2013 debut, Same Trailer Different Park. And there’s a reason for that: She reunited with past collaborators Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, and Luke Laird. Laird and McAnally co-produced her Grammy-winning debut.
“Nobody does humor better than those guys, and I was craving humor again,” she told NPR. “That was a big part of earlier albums, and then I maybe purposefully steered away from that, just so I didn’t paint myself into some sort of bumper sticker lane.”
Now, though? “I feel like we need to laugh more in this modern crazy time.”
Featured image by Jeremychanphotography/Getty Images
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