Kacey Musgraves aches for the solace she finds in nature. Trees and wildlife surround her home, yet it’s only 10 minutes from downtown Nashville. Musgraves’ eyes sparkle as she describes the deer, bobcats, and owls who wander across her yard. She chuckles, explaining she had to honk her horn at wild turkeys to get them to waddle out of her driveway.
Knowing the peace she finds in the forest, no one was more surprised than Musgraves when she felt herself gravitating to New York City to record her latest album, Deeper Well.
She calls it a “conundrum.”
“It’s this maximalist environment full of humans,” Musgraves says of New York City. “It’s loud. It stinks in places. It’s humanity on 10.”
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Yet, the Texas native felt compelled to record at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, the heart of the folk scene. Musgraves describes her creative brain at the time as a “blank canvas.” Unexpectedly, the city’s frantic energy and its crush of humanity made it easier to self-reflect and tap into her zen.
Musgraves’ intimate 14-song album Deeper Well was born from the experience. She re-teamed with producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian for the principally acoustic, folk-leaning atmospheric pop collection she released in March.
“Every project is different because you never step in the same river twice,” Tashian tells American Songwriter. “Seasons change; people get on different wavelengths. I think Kacey is a highly sensitive and perceptive artist. She won’t put her weight behind anything that feels insincere or too contrived.”
Tashian recalls that Musgraves and her producers broke “things down to the bones.” She didn’t want any loops, tracks, or beats.“I think she wanted people to know she can create things that are self-contained and don’t need a lot of production to understand them or for them to work,” he says.
Then, Musgraves realized she wasn’t finished writing for the project, adding seven new songs to the album and put out Deeper Into the Well in August. While the original version is home to the title track, radio single “Too Good To Be True,” and possibly Musgraves’ favorite song, “Jade Green,” Deeper Into the Well includes her Leon Bridges duet “Superbloom,” a song for her sister, “Little Sister,” her brokenhearted “Arm’s Length” and “Irish Goodbye,” a song about being ghosted by a romantic partner.
“It can be really intimidating to put your most intimate thoughts out there,” says Musgraves, perched on a stool in American Songwriter‘s Nashville office. “But I always find it to be the opposite in the sense that some of the things that are hard for me to say in real life, I can actually randomly say more easily in song form. The whole process is really therapeutic for me, for sure.”
Musgraves sat down with American Songwriter to share the stories behind many of the songs on Deeper Well and Deeper Into The Well.
The album begins with her heavenly “Cardinal”
“I’m a believer in the other side,” Musgraves says. “I think we don’t have all the answers there. And I think everything is made of energy. I just feel like there’s got to be something else other than what’s right in front of us.”
Musgraves and John Prine became good friends before Prine passed away in April 2020 from complications of COVID-19. Musgraves considers him a mentor and says he undoubtedly influenced her more than anyone else in songwriting.
“After he left this world, it was really strange,” Musgraves said. “A lot of things kind of started happening. We would be here all day if I went into all of those things, but there was some weird kind of supernatural stuff.”
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Sometimes, Musgraves feels she’s tapped into otherworldly things, and her friends joke about it.
“The weird stuff always finds me,” she says. “But one of the things was that this cardinal would come to my window every day. It was the same one, and he would sit on this branch. There were interesting song ideas and messages and lights turning on and off. I don’t know; it was just getting weird. There was that old saying, what is it? ‘Cardinals appear when angels are near.’ But yeah, that’s where that song kind of came from. Just looking at this cardinal being like, ‘Are you just a cardinal? Or are you bringing me a message from somewhere else?’”
“Deeper Well”
“Deeper Well” was the second song Musgraves and her producers wrote for the album. She didn’t have a title for it yet. She planned to let the songs shape her journey and then zoom out to find the overarching theme. When they wrote “Deeper Well,” the title spoke to her.
“I just knew it spoke to, in a larger sense, where I feel like I was in my life and where I am right now,” she says. “I’m right in the middle of my 30s. It feels really good. ‘Deeper Well’ is an ode to ruthlessly removing resistance to growth. That has been a theme for me in the last few years. It can look like trimming out the fat, trimming friendships down, and reallocating where your energy is spent. Are these habits working for me? Am I living in the right place? What can I refine here about my life? And sometimes that means maybe disappointing someone who has different expectations.”
“Too Good To Be True”
Musgraves describes the song as the newly-in-love stage when you’re dying to spend time together.
“You are making love,” she says. “You’re making breakfast, throwing all your cares out the window.”
“Too Good To Be True” delves into the fear of opening up again after being deeply hurt.
“It takes a lot of bravery to put yourself out there again,” she says. “But I do think that’s why we’re here as humans, and it can be easy to stay in this little world, currently single world, where you can control every aspect of everything, and it feels good. But you also grow a lot as a human by rubbing up against someone else’s shortcomings and them rubbing up against yours. And it’s just scary. Conflict is inevitable with love. It’s part of it. I think I was just in this mindset at that point in time of like, ‘Okay, I’m opening myself up again here.’”
“Jade Green”
“People ask me, ‘What’s your favorite song?’” Musgraves says. “And it’s ridiculous. You cannot pick as the creator. But if I was going to pick a fave, fave, I feel like ‘Jade Green’ would be very high up on there. That song makes me want to just frolic. I just want to frolic. I just want to run and frolic through Irish fields when I hear that song.”
“The Architect”
“The Architect” was the last song Musgraves wrote for Deeper Well. She thought the album was complete, but the singer, Shane McAnally, and Josh Osborne met for a write in Nashville in early 2023. The date was a couple of weeks after the Covenant School shooting in which three children and three adults were murdered.
“I think I can speak for everybody whenever I say Nashville did not feel right for a long time after that,” Musgraves says. “It just was so horrific and unbelievable, as all of those things are. But this one, obviously, was very close to home.”
Meeting her collaborators on a sunny day to do their jobs and write songs felt “just ridiculous” to her when there were parents down the street suffering. They didn’t know what to write about or what to say.
“We were talking about the beauty and the terror of being a human,” she says. “The conversation started flowing.”
She had the title “The Architect” written down but didn’t know what to do with it.
“If you say something like that in a room with either Shane or Josh, in two milliseconds, you’re going to have your answer,” she says. “Josh just goes, ‘Can I speak to the architect? What’s going on here in this world?’ It really was born out of a real conversation. And I was holding a little green apple whenever I was sitting in there. That song was written super fast. Some songs just write themselves.”
Musgraves put significant thought and intent into the original batch of songs for Deeper Well. She didn’t realize until later that she wanted to dig even deeper. Her original 14 songs expanded to 21 tracks.
“It’s scratching a little bit more under the surface,” she says. “I guess it just turns out there was more to say.”
Deeper Into The Well
“Ruthless”
Musgraves thought about her nephew when she was writing “Ruthless.”
But if anyone tried to hurt you, I would be ruthless for you / Do something crazy, you know I would, baby / I swear I’ve got your heart / And if it came down to it, I would be ruthless.
“Obviously, it can be about somebody that you’re in love with, or it can be about anyone that you love that you feel protective over,” Musgraves says. “That’s how I feel about my friend group. I’m nice until you’re messing with somebody that I really love, then the gloves come off.”
“Little Sister”
“There is something so beautiful and terrible about a sister’s relationship,” Musgraves says. “You’ll hurt each other so much. Growing up, Kelly and I have fought a lot. But I cannot imagine my life without her.”
Musgraves and her sister, Kelly, are best friends. The singer considers her a confidante. Kelly is a photographer and takes all of Musgraves’ photos.
“She’s brilliant,” Musgraves says. “But there was a point in time where I literally threw a full can of Coke purposely at her head. And I will say, I freaking nailed it. I could have been drafted into Major League Baseball with this throw. I mean, it was across the room. It was impressive, but it really hurt her. Anyway, the moral of the story is, we’re fine now.”
“Perfection” featuring Tiny Habits
“‘Perfection” is an ode to Musgraves’ OCD tendencies.
“I’m a very detail-oriented person,” she says. “Even since I was little, I really make sense of the world via symmetry and balance. I mean, you can ask all my friends. I’m always arranging things. If I’m standing at a hostess stand at a restaurant waiting to be seated, I’m straightening the business cards. So that song literally does touch on some of that. But also, my friends Tiny Habits, I’m such a fan of their songs, their writing, their voices. I just think they’re going to take over the damn world. I’m lucky to call them friends. They’re so sweet. And it is just an honor to have them on that song with me.”
“Arm’s Length”
An achingly vulnerable lullaby about loving someone who doesn’t love her back, lyrics include:
I couldn’t love you into lovin’ me| Keepin’ me should’ve been easy, but obviously| It just wasn’t easy| I gave you water, but I couldn’t make you drink| Keepin’ me just within reach, always holdin’ me| At arm’s length.
“I love that song,” Musgraves says, recalling that she wrote it in California with Shane McAnally, Josh Osborne, and Sarah Buxton. “They’re all three of my great friends, and it’s just so fun being in a room with them and writing. But it’s not a fun feeling to really love somebody and want to pull them in, and they’re just kind of keeping you here.”
The magic is in the specificity, she explains.
“That’s the challenge of a songwriter,” she says. “Every song has been written a million times. Every emotion has been written a million times. How can you say it differently?”
Musgraves challenges herself by asking how she can simplify songs. How can she make them more conversational? How can she flip the concept into something listeners wouldn’t expect?
“It’s a really fun challenge,” she says. “It’s almost like a little game.”
“Irish Goodbye”
Irish Goodbye is a term that means to leave without saying goodbye. Musgraves supports them at parties—but not in romantic relationships.
“Don’t ghost people,” she says. “Just have the balls to say, ‘I’m sorry. I need to move on. I need to do this, that, or the other.’ Don’t leave people hanging. But at a party, what are you going to do? Make the rounds? Say goodbye to a hundred people. You’re going to be out there all night. Just slip out the back. They won’t even notice.
“I love that song.”
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Musgraves Designs Clothing Line Inspired by Deeper Well.
Kacey Musgraves recently added fashion designer to her resume. Musgraves teamed with sustainable fashion brand Reformation for a 17-piece line primarily made from recycled cashmere and regenerative wool.
Reformation x Kacey Musgraves includes vintage-inspired and fashion-forward pieces ranging from boots, fur jackets, and denim corsets to delicate dresses, separates, long, heavy coats, and more. Prices range from $28 to $498. Musgraves and her sister, Kelly, who is also her photographer, traveled to the famous Cotswolds in England to do the brand’s photoshoot.
“I’m so proud of it,” Musgraves tells American Songwriter of the fashion line. “Even down to all the names, the fit of everything, where the zipper is.”
The singer who recently released Deeper Into the Well, the extended version of her Deeper Well album, described herself as “super hands-on” in the design process, even going over sketches and choosing the fabrics.
She describes Reformation as “an awesome clothing brand” that she’s a fan of. Musgraves has always had a heavy hand in designing her world—whether it’s her website, merchandise, or album covers. When this opportunity came up, it gave Musgraves the chance to flex a different type of creative muscle.
“I’m working hand in hand with a brand and thinking about their consumers, what they would like, what do I want?” she says. “I want to create a world for someone to step into, much like my albums. This was sort of an extension of that, and it did start with the aesthetic of Deeper Well. I thought, ‘How could this be taken into clothing form and another dimension?’
She details the line as beautiful, tailored, cottage core, feminine, and slightly equestrian. Given the aesthetic, the location for the photoshoot was of the utmost importance to her. Musgraves couldn’t be happier with the frames they captured in the Cotswolds and thinks they reflect the line flawlessly.
“They’re so dreamy,” she says of the photos, explaining that her sister had shot them at a house that was originally a monastery built in the 1400s. “There was a 1,000-year-old tree in the front yard. I mean, stacked stone walls and rolling hills and sheep and horses. Oh my God, it made my soul so happy.”
Photos by Kelly Christine Sutton
