On a new single tailor-made for a queer line-dancing routine, Kacey Musgraves feels “lonely with a capital H, if you know what I mean.” If somehow you don’t—perhaps you, earbuds in, are scratching your head, thinking: Honely??—the country songwriter is about to spell things out with a series of naughty entendres just slightly more tasteful than Travis Kelce’s “redwood tree.” “It’s been a real long 335 days” since there’s been a “truck up in [her] drive,” or a “tool up in [her] shed.” Sexual frustration has boiled into tension worthy of a Western noir, minor-key Spanish guitar included.
Had Kacey held onto this single for just four more days, she could have laid a pretty epic Easter egg—exactly 331 days ago, she asked X: “Is it possible to die of horniness? Asking for a friend.” But a new album’s on the way, so Musgraves can’t wait one more second to get it off her chest: “Y’all,” she sings on the hook, “I’m going through a dry spell.”
“Y’all” makes it clear that this isn’t an attempt at seduction, nor, like the new Hilary Duff song “Roommates” (another entry in the “women in their late thirties can be horny, too” canon), is it an attempt to rekindle intimacy with one partner in particular. No—“Dry Spell” is the admission you blurt out after a few mimosas with the girlfriends, when everyone’s gushing about their wild weekends and you simply have no new tea to spill. It’s a playful confession of boredom, unapologetic but ultimately bloodless—the subjects of lust matter less than the fact that they don’t exist, and because they don’t exist, they don’t inspire much, either. You can hear the girlfriends already: 335 days? But you’re such a catch! On “Dry Spell,” Musgraves offers the musical equivalent of a goofy, apathetic shrug: “Yup!”