Review | Kacey Musgraves’s ‘Middle of Nowhere’ Tour

I went to middle school in a building perched atop a long, dirt hill that my mom would drop me at the bottom of to avoid the onslaught of cars trying to get their pimply kids to class. And everyday, as I trudged up that hill, I sank deeper into myself as I memorized every word of Same Trailer Different Park by Kacey Musgraves. 

Musgraves is a singer-songwriter from a small town called Golden, Texas, and has played country gigs since she was a kid. She debuted with that album in 2012, then gained mainstream attention after winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for her third album, Golden Hour, in 2019. She gained recognition for her thoughtful, clever lyrics and willingness to be outspoken. Since then, she has released seven studio albums and toured to fans around the world, including for her most recent record Middle of Nowhere.

During her shows for this tour, she used a star-shaped stage, filled with visual surprises, in the middle of the arenas. At the start of the show, gunshot sounds rang out as sparks flew on the ceiling of the stage, as Musgraves walked out to the balcony of the set and sang “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy.” She then walked through the crowd to the center of the stage, joining the rest of the band for “Dry Spell”: “911, it’s officially a cry for help. Y’all, I’m going through a dry spell, yep,” she sang, later joking with the crowd that she doubts they’ve ever had a spell for a “year and a half” like she did.

Musgraves also played some fan favorites that weren’t from her newest record, including “High Horse,” “Golden Hour,” and “Merry Go ‘Round.” During the latter, she introduced the song, mentioning how it was so different from the subjects of songs on country radio at the time, that everyone told her not to release it. The stage spun while Musgraves played guitar and sang, “‘Cause mama’s hooked on Mary Kay, brother’s hooked on Mary Jane, and Daddy’s hooked on Mary two doors down … we get bored, so, we get married, just like dust, we settle in this town.”

A visual highlight of the show came during “Rhinestoned,” which saw Musgraves perch on a gigantic disco ball in the shape of … a pair of balls (yes, that kind). The balls made their way up into the air and spun around, as she sang, “let’s put a little sparkle on, until the heartache and the sadness is gone” and light fractured onto the audience below.

On certain nights of her tour, Musgraves performs some of her older songs that aren’t on the set list. After playing the album track “Hell on Me,” she went into “Deeper Well” and “Hookup Scene.” During “Hookup Scene,” she sat on the edge of one of the star points and sang with just her and the guitar. She opened up about quick fixes replacing love, singing, “You get your fill and leave empty, more lonely than before … you lay beside somebody you know isn’t right. I make believe it’s love.”

She ended the night with fan favorites “Follow Your Arrow” and “All My Exes Live in Texas,” a George Strait cover. When it first came out, I excitedly showed my mom “Follow Your Arrow,” starting off with, “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore. You don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor … rible person.” When she didn’t react to the first verse, I said, “Get it? Hor … rible person! So clever,” and ran back to my room to watch live clips of her singing unreleased songs on guitar. 

In addition to all her wit and cleverness, Musgraves has this way of writing that gives immense inner clarity, that then turns into the purest joy. It brings about the kind of pleasure you can’t see, and that’s precisely why I liked it so much when I first discovered her. Her songs lived in my mind, and the subjects she sang about spanned anywhere from pinpointing the specific mix of apathy and desperation that comes with hooking up with someone that sparks nothing in you, to how to feel the highs of life, and that the lows are equally necessary. But she packaged these truths in the type of writing that felt like a puzzle to figure out, or, if you were lucky, a language that belonged only to a few people.

I was a music fiend back then, listening to anything and everything I could, and Musgraves was one of the first artists that I didn’t have to figure out. After being the girl who, even now, most people struggle to understand, her music is one of the only things that spoke my language. 

And it’s still true now.

“I find humor in things … it’s a coping mechanism,” Musgraves noted at the end of the show. “You make me feel seen because what I thought through, I know I wasn’t alone.”