Kacey Musgraves has traded a slow burn for a “Deeper Well” in her new single, released Thursday as the first track from what will be an album of that same name, due to arrive March 15.
The song “Deeper Well” finds the singer-songwriter in her most acoustic, finger-picking mode, expressing a sense of contentment as she moves on from an unsatisfactory relationship and contemplates other lifestyle changes. A companion video was also released Thursday, directed by Hannah Lux Davis (known for videos with Ariana Grande, Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj).
The track list for the new album encompasses 10 songs, with the more intriguing titles including “Too Good to Be True,” “Giver/Taker,” “Anime Eyes” and “Lonely Millionaire.”
Like her previous two albums — the Grammy album of the year winner “Golden Hour” and “Star-Crossed” — the new Interscope/MCA Nashville project is almost entirely co-produced and co-written with Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. That’s with the exception of one song, “The Architect,” a series of lyrical questions directed at God that she wrote with Nashville luminaries Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, who did much of the collaborating on her first two albums.
Musgraves had already teased some of the lyrics for the “Deeper Well” song in excerpts of handwritten script on her social media. The autobiographical tone is set with her name-checking her age in the first verse: “My Saturn has returned / When I turned 27, everything started to change / Took a long time, but I learned / There’s two kinds of people / One is a giver and one’s always trying to take all they can take” (any relation to the aforementioned track “Giver/Taker” presumably strictly intentional). “So, I’m saying goodbye / To the people that I feel are real good at wasting my time / No regrets, baby / I just think that maybe you go your way and I’ll go mine / It’s been a real good time / But you’ve got dark energy / Something I can’t unsee / And I’ve got to take care of myself.”
Musgraves also suggests in subsequent verses that she may not be quite the weed advocate she once was, singing: “I used to wake and bake / Roll out of bed, hit the gravity bong / that I made and start the day / For a while it got me by / Everything I did seemed better / when I was high / I don’t know why.”
In a statement about the new song, Musgraves said, ““Sometimes you reach a crossroads.Winds change direction.What you once felt drawn to doesn’t hold the same allure. You get blown off course but eventually find your footing and forage for new inspiration, new insight and deeper love somewhere else.”
The album was recorded at New York’s famed Electric Lady Studios, of which Musgraves said, “I wasseeking some different environmental energy, and Electric Lady has the best mojo. Great ghosts.”
Musgraves just won a Grammy Sunday night for her featured appearance on Zach Bryan’s “I Remember Everything.” With that, she became the first female performer to win in all four Grammy country categories.
“Deeper Well” track listing:
- Cardinal
- Deeper Well
- Too Good to Be True
- Moving Out
- Giver / Taker
- Sway
- Dinner With Friends
- Heart of the Woods
- Jade Green
- The Architect
- Lonely Millionaire
- Heaven Is
- Anime Eyes
- Nothing to Be Scared Of
