“I felt, in many ways, on top of the world in my career, but in my personal life, I felt like I was dying inside. I was crumbling. I was sad. I felt lonely. I felt broken,” she said about the period after the success of Hour and her marriage meltdown. Not content to just be pegged as a country artist, Musgraves said that while she doesn’t belong strictly in that genre, she is deeply rooted in it. That said, the list of artist she describes as influences on the next album include: Bill Withers, Daft Punk, Sade, the Eagles and, naturally, Weezer.
“She can do whatever she wants to,” good pal and country legend Willie Nelson told Elle. “I think whatever she thinks she can do, you’d better get out of the way.” If Golden Hour — which seamlessly blended pop, country and a disco-tinged psychedelia — was about escapism, “fantasy” and viewing life through “rose-colored glasses,” Musgraves said the follow-up is “realism.”
As described by the magazine, the collection finds her singing about “longing for the past, recognizing that it was imperfect and craving it anyway, thinking about the possibilities of putting oneself out there again, and then politely demurring, for now.”
Check out the Elle cover below.
