Somewhere in a hotel room several floors above me, Kacey Musgraves wakes up – spontaneously, without an alarm, at the time of our interview. The country-pop star is famously always late (she admits as much on her ethereal Americana track “Slow Burn”, from the double Grammy-winning 2018 album Golden Hour). In this case, it’s because the US to UK jet lag has hit her hard.
Fifteen minutes behind schedule, she pushes through the mahogany doors in not one but two plaid shirts, grey sweatpants and Birkenstocks. Walking across the empty bar, she rubs her eyes, looking like a bare-faced Disney princess who just wandered out of the woods. This is her only written interview with the UK press – she wants to relax and live a little while promoting her new country album, Middle of Nowhere. Everything about Musgraves’ current life is being led at a slower, deliberate register. She seems happy and relaxed, splitting her time between Tennessee (she’s been a “lone wolf” there since moving 15 years ago), her home state of Texas, and Mexico, whose laidback beauty inspired the sounds on the new record. It was written mostly about the time she’s spent intentionally single between romantic relationships. When I ask if she’s dating again, she makes a joking reference to her recent single “Dry Spell”, smiling at the floor as she tells me in her soft southern lilt: “Well, the dry spell has been broken, I’ll just say that.”
