Earlier this week Kacey Musgraves announced she'll be releasing a new album, Middle of Nowhere, on May 1. The 37-year-old singer-songwriter dropped a new single called “Dry Spell," but another new song called “Horses and Divorces” is already getting people talking.
In an interview with NPR, Musgraves was asked about the song, a collaboration with country singer Miranda Lambert, to which she explained, "The collab with Miranda, there's a whole story there."
Musgraves and Lambert have reportedly had a rumoured feud that goes back years, and now the former has admitted the hatchet has officially been buried.
Apparently, the beef began in 2013, when Musgraves was a songwriter on the verge of breaking as an artist herself. She had co-written a song with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally called "Mama's Broken Heart" that she was eyeing as her first single. However, Lambert would end up recording it, scoring a hit with the song, which didn't sit well with Musgraves.
"It was gonna be my first single and I loved the song so much," she tells NPR. "I had been a staff writer for years at that point, writing for other people and had finally felt like I was collecting songs that felt like me that I didn't wanna pitch to anyone else. Then, the song gets pitched to her without my consent or knowledge. It was a tricky situation. She ended up loving the song and she really wanted it. And I had other co-writers to consider."
In the end, as Musgraves puts it, "everyone won," as she would go on to write another song, "Merry Go Round," and release it as her debut. And while the two were far from friends, it wasn't until Musgraves discovered their shared love of riding horses that she felt they could make bygones be bygones.
She says, "I saw her on Instagram one day, riding one of her horses, and I was like, 'Well, we ain't friends, but I guess we have two things in common, horses and divorces, that's for sure. Wait, that could be a really funny song. What if it's a duet with her? What if I got her to write on it?'"
"I just randomly reached out to her and I was like, 'I know we've had our s**t over the years, but listen, we've at least got two things in common. I'm not trying to be your friend. You got your life, I have mine. But I think this would be a pretty f**king funny song, and we should write it with Shane [McAnally]'," she adds. "And she was like, 'Hell yeah, I'm in, let's do it.' So it was very full circle in so many ways. We aired out any of the old laundry. We had some laughs and wrote the song in a matter of a few hours."
Musgraves feels she and Lambert putting the past behind them is an example that could help others in the politically divisive society we live in.
"I think it could be also a micro representation of what I wish that the world would do sometimes, just f**king sit down and poke fun at each other, have a beer and call it a day," she says.
Read the full interview here.