“I’ve Written a Ton of Songs Already”: Where Is Kacey Musgraves Headed After Rejoining Lost Highway Records?

Staying in her lane has never been part of Kacey Musgraves MO.

The Golden, Texas singer has barely made the same record twice. Much like the Katy Freeway, the famous 26-lane section of the I-10 in her home state, her musical journey has been characterised by switching across whenever she chooses, slowing it down when the mood takes her and moving out into the fast lane when the time feels right. Some of those lanes will take you to someplace new, but turn it around, and there'll be a route that takes you all the way back to where you came from.

That's exactly what she's done this week, as the 8x GRAMMY® Award-winning singer-songwriter announced that she'd signed to Nashville-based Lost Highway Records, which coincidentally makes her not only the first artist signed by the relaunched label but also the final artist signed to Lost Highway. She signed to the label in 2011 while she was working on her debut studio album, Same Trailer, Different Park, before it was absorbed by Mercury Nashville in 2012.

The renowned label announced its relaunch on 15 April, with the full support of Interscope Geffen A&M. Now, it's announced Kacey Musgraves as its first signing, bringing her back to where it all began.

Founded in 2000 by Luke Lewis, for the next 12 years, Lost Highway became home to such culture-defining artists of the era as Willie Nelson, Ryan Bingham, Hayes Carll, Lucinda Williams, Drive-By Truckers, Lyle Lovett, Tift Merritt, Robert Earl Keen, Shelby Lynne, Elvis Costello and Mary Gauthier.

It also released several acclaimed soundtracks, including the T Bone Burnett produced O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which took Album of the Year honours at the GRAMMY Awards, the Country Music Association Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards.

The label was folded into Mercury Nashville when Lewis retired in 2012. Now helmed by Robert Knotts and Jake Gear, who come to the label from Nashville-based Thirty Tigers and UMG Nashville, John Janick, Chairman and CEO of Interscope Capitol and IGA, says that the ethos behind the newly relaunched label is the same as it was 25 years ago.

"Lost Highway carved out a special place in the remarkable musical legacy of Nashville," he shared in a statement. "It was a left-of-center label with one-of-a-kind artists who, at their core, were great songwriters and moved culture. With this new chapter in Lost Highway's history, we are devoted to empowering the next generation of trailblazers, both artists and executives".

"Kacey exemplifies the kind of culture-shifting, left-of-center artists that Lost Highway has always been known for," he adds. "Given the close relationship she's had with both Lost Highway and Interscope, it seemed only natural for her to be the first artist signed in this new chapter."

The landscape of country music has always been shaped by its outliers—by the outsiders, the misfits, and the renegades. Whether it was Waylon and Willie and the Outlaw bucking the Nashville Sound trends in the late '60s, Gram Parsons and The Byrds in the '70s, or Steve Earle, Randy Travis, Dwight Yoakam, and the New Traditionalists going back to country's roots again in the '80s, Kacey Musgraves has always been an artist in that mould.

"Lost Highway was always a musical stable for artists who might be considered outliers or outlaws, those who live on the fringe," Kacey Musgraves adds. "In 2011, when other record labels questioned my songwriting and my more traditional country sound, Lost Highway believed in me, signing me to my first label deal and helping me take my music around the world."

Kacey marked signing to the label by releasing her interpretation of the Leon Payne-penned' Lost Highway', which Hank Williams covered in 1949 and after which the label is named.

"I didn't think it needed some avant-garde reimagining," she told Hollywood Reporter about the song. "I wanted to bring it back to life. When I was in the studio, I looked into the genesis of the song, and I was taken aback to find it has real ties to where I'm from. Hank Williams recorded the version we know and love, but the songwriter is Leon Payne."

"He was attempting to hitchhike from California to Alba, Texas. His mother was sick, and he was trying to get to her. I almost fell out of my chair - Alba is the next town over to the teeny, tiny town I'm from, Golden. Alba has no more than 500 people; I've never heard it referenced anywhere in pop culture. This song is full circle for me, in terms of where I started and where I am now, my label".

'Lost Highway' marks Kacey Musgraves' first new release since her 2023 album Deeper Well, and both sonically and spiritually, it feels like a gentle turn back toward a more traditionally rooted country sound. On Deeper Well, songs like 'The Architect' and 'Arm's Length' hinted at this shift. Co-written with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne, those tracks were notable as the first to feature McAnally on a Musgraves album since Golden Hour and the first with Osborne since Pageant Material.

Signing with Lost Highway could indicate an even more direct return to the country fold, not that Musgraves has ever considered herself to have left it. In much the same way that Willie Nelson, something of a country spirit animal for Musgraves, has been able to experiment with everything from show tunes to reggae and still remain at heart a country singer, Musgraves has always considered herself to be a country music artist regardless of her output.

"I find it so interesting that we point to these artists who were outliers and outlaws, like Willie Nelson," she told the Hollywood Reporter. "He has had a long-standing struggle with Nashville; he was pissing off a lot of people. Now we all point to him as this icon, a new north star for normal. It takes someone breaking out and doing something different".

"It makes sense that when labels basically serve as a bank to fund things, they're going to want the least risk involved," she adds. "Unfortunately, that doesn't work with creativity, because creativity, at its core, is risky. To have the opportunity to bring something back that honors the relationship between creativity, being unique and risk, we need more of that."

It will be interesting to see whether the signing with Lost Highway signposts a turn even further back down a more traditional country route. The label looks set to be an important home for many more left-of-centre country artists, and it's a lineage that Kacey Musgraves seems to identify with. With its major label money mixing with an indie label sensibility, Lost Highway should give artists like Musgraves the freedom to continue to be innovative and exploratory musically.

"I've written a ton of songs already," Musgraves told Hollywood Reporter. "I love being in a period of time where I'm not rushed by a deadline and have the space to mosey and poke around. I'm not sure yet where it's going to end up."

"There was Same Trailer; then Pageant Material went even harder in the country direction - it was a love letter to all the classic country I love. Naturally, it felt good for me to explore some other sounds, and I went into Golden Hour territory. Then I went through a divorce and was in a really intense place in my life, and I went in the opposite direction with Star Crossed. With Deeper Well, I swung back in toward my center".

It was a swing that brought her back into the mainstream country fold in many ways, with 'The Architect' winning Best Country Song at the Grammy Awards and, perhaps more importantly, earning her three CMA award nominations for the first time since 2020.

"I've been feeling really good playing around with some more - I want to say 'traditional' - songs, but at the same time, there always has to be a modern edge there in some way," she told Hollywood Reporter this week. "There has to be a balance between tradition and future."

One thing that's never changed with Musgraves, regardless of the overall sound of each record, has been the straight-talking simplicity of her songwriting. Whether it was the heartbreakingly intimate confessionals of Star Crossed, the simple romanticism of Golden Hour, or the sardonic one-liners, wry cynicism, and sassy put-downs of Pageant Material and Same Trailer, Different Park, at the core of these records was a directness that has always typified country music despite their lyrical sophistication.

"I wasn't setting out to be some martyr or freaking rule-breaker," she adds. "I'm just doing my job as a songwriter. When you look at country music as a genre and where it started, it is really textured, beautiful layers of real stories, heartbreak, things that aren't always easy to talk about. It's stories for the everyday person. And that's what always draws me back to country music: It's there for you, no matter what you're going through."

Whatever country music means to you, Kacey Musgraves needs to be somewhere in that definition. She has managed to cross over to the pop mainstream without turning her back on country music, reimagining it in many ways to appeal to the same things in a wider audience that Dolly Parton appeals to, even if that wider audience doesn't specifically identify as country music fans.

"I'm not leaving country behind, I'm just taking it with me," Dolly Parton once famously quipped to her detractors in the late '70s when she left Nashville behind and took off for LA in search of pop crossover stardom. That's exactly what Kacey Musgraves has always done, whichever lane she's taken.

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