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<\/a>If Deeper Well had Musgraves clearing out that which no longer served her, Middle of Nowhere is the harvest after a fallow season: These songs grew in the space she created for herself\u2014songs that feel, and sound, like home. Though she\u2019s had immense success fusing genres, particularly with 2018\u2019s amply awarded Golden Hour, Middle of Nowhere is her first project to wholeheartedly embrace classic country sounds since her 2013 debut Same Trailer Different Park and its follow-up Pageant Material.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve made this kind of big circle\u2014I don\u2019t think it was even fully intentional,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m always trying to find ways to pull the traditional country in, because that\u2019s where my heart is, that\u2019s what I grew up with. You catch me on any day, and I could be listening to, like, Dr. Dre, or I could be listening to old, beautiful jazz or mariachi music. There\u2019s all these different flavors, but I\u2019m always looking to bring country along with me in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n
She did so with slow acoustic fingerpicking, yawning pedal steel, the echo of a guitar lick in an empty dive bar, accordion, and tejano rhythms across Middle of Nowhere, and she invited a select group of peers and idols along for the ride. Billy Strings saddles up for \u201cEverybody Wants to Be a Cowboy,\u201d a tribute to the non-posers in dirty boots; Willie Nelson, who Musgraves calls the \u201cpatriarch of truth of country music,\u201d joins her for \u201cUncertain, TX.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lyrically, Musgraves is at the top of her game and funny as hell, with \u201cDry Spell\u201d\u2014in which she laments being so \u201clonely with a capital H\u201d and how there \u201cain\u2019t nobody\u2019s truck up in my drive\u201d\u2014offering a welcome laugh, as does \u201cHorses and Divorces,\u201d the commiserating duet with Miranda Lambert that winks at their (now-squashed) feud. But even if she\u2019s come full circle, Middle of Nowhere makes one thing clear: She may have left Golden, but this isn\u2019t a return, because she never left country.<\/p>\n
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