Kacey Musgraves Moves to Lost Highway and (Maybe) Back to Her Roots

Random Notes 18 Comments


Call me cautiously intrigued about what Kacey Musgraves might have up her sleeve in the not too distant future.

You can almost forget that when Kacey Musgraves came out in 2012 with her debut single “Merry Go ‘Round,” she was considered the cool artist of mainstream country, and with her first two albums Same Trailer Different Park (2013), Pageant Material (2015), and even her A Very Kacey Christmas album (2016), she presented as a neotraditionalist in country, however kitschy in aspect. Her big breakout Golden Hour (2018) also included some of this sound, even if it was also her transition into more pop material.

In fact, Kacey Musgraves was never really meant to be a creature of Music Row in Nashville. It all just kind of happened that way. When she initially signed her label deal, it was with Lost Highway Records, which was UMG Nashville’s “alt-country” label so to speak where less commercial and Americana-like acts such as Hayes Carll and Ryan Bingham were stabled. But when Lost Highway folded, Musgraves was moved to the much more mainstream-oriented Mercury Nashville, and was marketed through them.

Recently, it was announced that Lost Highway was being recommissioned, and even more recently that Kacey Musgraves was named the label’s new flagship artist. She even released her version of the “Lost Highway” song, written by Leon Payne, and popularized by Hank Williams. It recalls Kacey’s traditional country roots.


But Kacey’s albums Star-Crossed (2021) and the slightly more folksy Deeper Well (2024) tell a different story. Musgraves moved away from co-writers and producers Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne who helped craft her kitschy traditional country sound (similar to the band Midland), and Musgraves found a decidedly more indie rock aspect with producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian.

These projects pulled Kacey Musgraves away from her country fandom, and frankly haven’t really expanded the audience into the indie world. Even some of Kacey’s strongest supporters called them a slight disappointment, though Deeper Well did find a more favorable reception than Star-Crossed, and saw the return of Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne on the album’s biggest song “The Architect” (which won a Grammy).

Maybe Kacey Musgraves has gotten the hint that what the world wants from her is a bit more of her country influences compared to her last couple of projects. And if she’s reading the tea leaves, she would know that’s where the public’s appetite is at the moment.

In a recent feature in The Hollywood Reporter, Kacey Musgraves stated,

From the age of 7, 8 years old, I was singing all the country standards and classics: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Hank Snow, Cindy Walker. It’s such a part of me, I can’t escape even if I wanted to. 

And it really feels good to wholeheartedly embrace that sound, because I’m always listening to that kind of thing. There may be a misconception that country music is easy to replicate. When you look at the bones of traditional country — the structure, the sounds, the subject matter — it’s not easy to replicate. It comes across as very simple, and the best country music is. 

But it’s full of so many layers of heart and real life, real stories. And there’s a lot of restraint. Really good traditional country music, there’s a lot of space for the lyrics, the story, for the heartbreak and the texture. I really appreciate that about that era of country music. It paints a picture, but it’s subtle and it’s simple.

Not only does this quote feel like Kacey Musgraves explaining some of her most fundamental influences, it feels like Kacey Musgraves explaining that country music isn’t just something you can declare you want to make without a deeper understanding of what it is—something that feels like it needs to be underscored in this moment when it seems everyone and their mother wants to “go country.”

There is also plenty of talk of pushing boundaries and taking risks in country in the Hollywood Reporter feature—something that has colored Kacey’s career throughout the years. I don’t think any of us should expect the next Kacey Musgraves project to be traditional country. But she does say in the article,

“I’ve been feeling really good playing around with some more—I want to say ‘traditional’—but at the same time, there always has to be a modern edge there in some way. There has to be a balance between tradition and future.”

It’s that edge she found between “traditional” and “future” that made early Kacey Musgraves so compelling and influential on a lot of other performers. If she could find that edge again, perhaps she could get back to the sound that netted her eight Grammy Awards, and helped offer a counter-balance during the Bro Country era, and eventually, pulled the genre away from from the ills of the 2010s.

Perhaps on Lost Highway, Musgraves can find that alt-country magic once again.

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