Kacey Musgraves turned to social media on her 33rd birthday on Saturday (Aug. 21) to tease fans with new, never-before-heard music — and the lyrics appear to be inspired directly by her divorce from Ruston Kelly.
Musgraves posted a series of what appear to be snippets of lyrics to a new song to her Instagram on Saturday afternoon, setting off a frenzy among fans who’ve already been speculating about the possibility of a new musical release from the singer-songwriter in recent days.
The first clip features the words, “Let me set the scene …” in elaborate print against a backdrop of what appears to be a cloudy sky. Those words are accompanied by a Spanish-style acoustic guitar that sets a haunting, melancholy tone before Musgraves sings those words, the apparent opening lines of a song. The music swirls behind her as a harp and strings build, but the clip cuts off, and a while a string of subsequent posts appear to flesh out the lyrics, she offers fans no further music.
See the rest of Musgraves’ posts via her Instagram. Put together, the words read as follows:
Let me set the scene / Two lovers ripped right at the seams / They woke up from the perfect dream / And then the darkness came
I signed the papers yesterday / You came and took your things away / Moved out of the home we made / And gave you back your name
What have we done? / Did we fly too high? / Just to get burned by the sun? / No one’s to blame / ‘Cause we called all the angels to save us / Called them by name / But I guess they got lost …
Musgraves had offered no further music or any explanation of what might be coming as of publication time, but she has said in public that she’s been working on new music that has been inspired by her divorce, and rumors have been swirling via fan accounts in recent days that the announcement of Musgraves’ much-anticipated fourth studio album might be imminent.
Musgraves married fellow singer-songwriter Kelly in October of 2017, and she credits their loving relationship with much of the influence for her smash third album, 2018’s Golden Hour, which found her turning away from the sometimes acerbic wit and observational roots music of her first two albums and toward a lush, pop-influenced romanticism.
The couple announced their divorce in July of 2020, and Musgraves has said that the emotions that followed will impact her next project just as heavily.
“Golden Hour was, in a lot of senses, escapism. It was fantasy. It was rose-colored glasses,” she explained to Elle in May, describing her forthcoming project as more “realism.”
“Being a human is tragic, but it’s also beautiful,” she observed. “And you can’t really experience the beautiful parts of life without also experiencing the absolutely heart-wrenching.”
Musgraves says her next album will follow the three-act model of a Shakespearean tragedy and tell the story of a love affair that was simply not written in the stars. The project will draw on a wide range of artistic inspirations, from Bill Withers to British singer-songwriter Sade.
“It almost takes the blame off the two people, which is what I like, because it could be easy in a heartbreak to be like, ‘Well, you f–ked up, it’s your fault.’ ‘No, you f–ked up, it’s your fault,’” Musgraves told Elle, “And it’s like, ‘No, let’s just blame the stars. Let’s just say that we’re not meant to be.'”
Musgraves previously teased two of the new songs in their raw form during a podcast appearance in early August of 2021, singing bits of “Camera Roll” and “If I Was an Angel.”
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