Putting their past drama aside to write what I’m sure will be a bad*** country song. Today, Kacey Musgraves announced her sixth studio album Middle of Nowhere, which was produced by Kacey alongside longtime collaborators Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk.
Kacey is a proud Texas girl, and so the album draws on plenty of inspiration from her home state, and considering there’s a sign in her tiny, unincorporated, no-stoplight hometown of Golden, Texas, with a population of under 300 that reads “Golden, TX: Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere,” that sparked the idea for the title track and much of the theme for the entire album.
Middle of Nowhere features collaborations with icon Willie Nelson, bluegrass phenom Billy Strings, and South African musician Gregory Alan Isakov, and yes, that long-awaited, seemingly improbable duet with Miranda Lambert is coming on a song called “Horses and Divorces,” and in case you don’t some of the backstory, these two Texas queens have actually had a long-standing feud, for lack of a better word, that stemmed from Miranda’s hit song “Mama’s Broken Heart,” which Kacey wrote and had planned to use as her debut single.
Actually, even before either one of them had any sort of success with their careers, their families even knew each other just from them being involved in music in Texas as teenagers, and Kacey often explains interview that her grandma was her first booking agent, and was never afraid to call up anyone in the Lone Star state and tell them her granddaughter needed to perform.
But Mrs. Barbara also helped out a young Miranda back in the day, and was the reason Miranda ever tried out for Nashville Star, which ultimately landed her the first first record deal of her now-highly successful career.
“Mama’s Broken Heart” was released as the fourth single from Lambert’s 2011 Four the Record album in 2013, and was written by Brandy Clark, Shane McAnally and of course, Kacey Musgraves. The song peaked at #2 on the U.S. Billboard Country Airplay chart and has since been certified 3× Platinum by the RIAA, which means it has moved over 1,960,000 units.
But the story goes that Miranda really wanted the song, and Kacey was reluctant to give it up, clearly knowing that it was a hit. I’ve heard that Miranda asked Kacey at her wedding (or possibly rehearsal dinner, I don’t know which one it was honestly) to Blake Shelton in 2011. Because Miranda was the much bigger artist at the time, Kacey realized, at least for the sake of her co-writers, the song would have more success if Miranda cut it, and she recently revealed that’s why she gave it up. She does background vocals on it, and the song became a hit, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But even as they were two of the biggest stars in country music over the last 10 to 20 years, they never worked together or had much to do with each other at all, even though they clearly have so much in common and come from towns that are very close together.
So finally, Kacey decided it was time to bury the hatchet, so to speak, and in speaking with NPR Music’s Jewly Hight, Kacey explained what went down back then and how the two of them ended up working together for this album.
Kacey said “Mama’s Broken Heart” was pitched to Miranda without her “consent or knowledge,” and Miranda fell in love with it. As I suspected, Kacey knew it would be a huge opportunity for her co-writers for an artist like Miranda, who was massive at the time and really at a high spot in her career from a commercial standpoint, so she gave it up.
Ultimately, Kacey said it all worked out because she went with “Merry Go Round” as her debut single, and in my humble opinion it’s one of the greatest country songs of all time, but still, there were hard feelings considering how everything went down:
“Yeah. It was two singers from two nearby, small Texas towns. There’s a lot that comes with that. Then we each take our own different paths, both leading us to Nashville at different times. There was all this excitement behind ‘Mama’s Broken Heart’ for me and it was gonna be my first single and I loved the song so much.
I had been a staff writer for years at that point writing for other people and had finally felt like I was collecting songs that felt like me that I didn’t wanna pitch to anyone else. Then, the song gets pitched to her without my consent or knowledge. It was a tricky situation. She ended up loving the song and she really wanted it. And I had other co-writers to consider. I knew I would have to go back to the drawing board.
And ultimately, I’m really glad that I did, because it forced me to write ‘Merry Go Round,’ which ended up making way more sense for me anyways, aesthetically and lyrically, to kick my whole thing off, versus ‘Mama’s Broken Heart.’ And that ended up going number one for her. So in the end, everyone won because I was able to let go of something.”
They lost touch at that point and definitely “wouldn’t consider each other friends,” but when Kacey saw a photo of Miranda riding one of her horses on Instagram one day, it sparked an idea… because they have two things in common: “horses and divorces,” and a song was born. Kacey says she randomly reached out and asked Miranda if she wanted to write it with herself and Shane McAnally, and Miranda was eager to do it:
“We’d lost touch for years and wouldn’t consider each other friends. I saw her on Instagram one day, riding one of her horses, and I was like, ‘Well, we ain’t friends, but I guess we have two things in common, horses and divorces, that’s for sure.
Wait, that could be a really funny song. What if it’s a duet with her? What if I got her to write on it?’ I just randomly reached out to her and I was like, ‘I know we’ve had our s*** over the years, but listen, we’ve at least got two things in common. I’m not trying to be your friend. You got your life, I have mine. But I think this would be a pretty f****** funny song, and we should write it with Shane [McAnally].’ And she was like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m in, let’s do it.'”
Kacey called it a “very full circle” moment, adding that they aired out an past laundry, had some laughs, and wrote the song in a matter of hours:
“So it was very full circle in so many ways. We aired out any of the old past laundry. We had some laughs and wrote the song in a matter of a few hours.”
I already know it’s probably going to be my favorite song on the album… it feels like the Super Bowl to me, though that actually still feels like a mild explanation.
Middle of Nowhere is due out everywhere on May 1st, and you can see the album cover here:
Kacey also put out “Dry Spell” today, which is a hilarious track written with Shane McAnally, Luke Laird and Josh Osborne, people she wrote a ton of her earlier stuff with, which I am so here for. Like she mentioned, she wrote a lot of this music during a time she was very much single, and the music video is a really funny representation of what kind of “dry spell” she was really in.
Check it out:
“Dry Spell”
Middle of Nowhere Tracklist:
1.Middle of Nowhere
2.Dry Spell
3.Back on the Wagon
4.I Believe in Ghosts
5.Abilene
6.Coyote feat. Gregory Alan Isakov
7.Loneliest Girl
8.Everybody Wants To Be a Cowboy feat. Billy Strings
9.Horses and Divorces feat. Miranda Lambert
10.Uncertain, Texas feat. Willie Nelson
11.Rhinestoned
12.Mexico Honey
13.Hell on Me
