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Musician Kacey Musgraves (album cover)

Album of the week:

Country music is on everyone's lips right now, the pop sound of the moment, if you will: The omnipresent Taylor Swift comes from US pop and folk music anyway, even Sheryl Crow, who successfully synthesized country rock and pop long before Swift, releases a new album full of Americana sounds despite announced early retirement.

Beyoncé is releasing her country album "Cowboy Carter" in a few weeks, Lana Del Rey wants to release "Lasso" in September, which already suggests a bold "Yee-haw" in the title.

Even rapper Post Malone was infected by the country virus and now likes to perform in Stetson.

Lana Del Rey's producer Jack Antonoff, also Taylor Swift's studio intimate, recently whispered that this whole country buzz is now on the verge of boiling over into the mainstream; he can feel it.

One person who no longer feels the hype is obviously Kacey Musgraves.

The successful singer from Texas, who helped a lot in tearing country music off the pickup truck of macho cowboys and making it more feminine and modern, isn't playing along with the current country craze, but she's barely there won a Grammy for her duet with Zach Bryan, another country innovator.

But Musgraves may have said to himself: Been there, done that.

She no longer has to prove anything, but can concentrate on her spiritual well-being - and on her songwriting.

Your new album “Deeper Well” rejects pop appeal.

It features introspective, quiet songs that harken back to the genre's folk origins.

It is an album of inner contemplation and self-sufficiency that embraces the country-soul melting of the sixties as well as the British folk of that era - from Glen Campbell to Fairport Convention, so to speak, but less Grand Ole Opry, violin, banjo, steel guitar.

The texts are about a cleansing and grounding process, which Musgraves recently completed through therapy and all sorts of reading about cosmic orbits and astrological determinations.

Aside from all the esotericism, which is unfortunately also part of the aura of this album, it was also about a tangible process of cutting off people and circumstances that were not good for her.

“So I'm saying goodbye/ To the people that I feel are really good at wasting my time,” she sings in the title song in a serene voice.

She has found a deeper well from which she draws her strength and from which less “dark energy” flows.

With fingerpicked acoustic guitar, she reflects on the small, important things in life: “Made some breakfast, made some love/ This is what dreams are made of/ On a cloudy Monday morning,” it says in “Too Good To Be True.”

Many of their new songs are so unobtrusive, so deeply relaxed that it's almost unbearable in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

At the same time, one already suspects that it will be precisely these songs in Musgrave's work, including "Sway" and "Heart of the Woods", that one will return to with admiration in retrospect.

Because they are timeless in the best possible sense.

They have the calm to outlast trends and the spirit of the times, even if they seem almost outrageously unspectacular at the moment.

Only rarely, for example in the soft (everything here is soft) R&B ballad "Lonely Millionaire" or in the relaxed electronic tune "Anime Eyes", does Musgraves let it be known that she is still competent at the infatuation of styles aimed at the pop charts controlled.

This talent made her 2018 album “Golden Hour” an event.

It earned her two of her seven Grammys.

With songs like “Space Cowboy” and the daring disco anthem “High Horse,” she empowered traditional country tropes and shaped them into sparkling, confidently feminine empowerment music.

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Kacey Musgraves

»Deeper Well«

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At the time, it was all about celebrating her newfound happiness with husband Ruston Kelly.

Three years later, she poured the pain of the separation into an album called "Star-Crossed", which turned out to be far too small and shallow a vessel for the big demands: it was neither suitable as a big, glamorous crossover spectacle nor for Romeo -and-Julia tragedy, which served as a superstructure.

It was time for a reset, a return to the roots.

As the delicate, nature-loving forest fairy that she presents herself as in her new video clips, Musgraves, 35, has apparently found peace with herself and her fame - even beyond relationships with men.

Her last affair with the poet Cole Schafer, which was exploited on Instagram, ended while she was recording her album in New York's Electric Lady studio.

This time, however, there is little of heartbreak or stress in their new songs, which are deeply immersed in contentment and so charmingly detach themselves from the pressure of the outside world.

“I don’t care for money or fame,” she sings in the compellingly beautiful ballad “Heaven Is.”

Apparently this pop star's work-life balance is very healthy right now.

So Kacey Musgraves would be a trendsetter again.

(8.0/10)

Listened briefly:

Justin Timberlake – “Everything I Thought It Was”

The story of Justin Timberlake's new album, which he claims to have been working on for four years, goes something like this: The album title supposedly came about when JT played the record to a friend, who then said enthusiastically: "That sounds like everything I I wished from you!” All right.

But what do you actually want from Justin Timberlake, the likeable R&B and pop singer and occasional actor who once became famous as part of the boy band *NSYNC?

Maybe not exactly another album that seems like a colorful candy bag from Späti, where more than half is inedible or sticky stuff.

Timberlake was always at his best when he was in the studio with the right producers, most recently almost 20 years ago when he created “FutureSex/LoveSounds” with Timbaland.

Since then there haven't been many hits, apart from perhaps the beautiful Chris Stapleton duet "Say Something" from the last album "Man of the Woods".

Here too, it is the two Timbaland songs that work best, the jittery “Infinity Sex” as well as the ballad “Love & War”.

With other producers, they often only come out with generic or irrelevant stuff like the disco smash “My Favorite Drug” (Louis Bell) and the self-fulfilling title “F**kin' Up the Disco” (Calvin Harris).

Or self-plagiarisms like “Drown,” which is based on JT’s early hit “Cry Me a River,” but falls flat.

Oh, maybe you just wish Justin Timberlake would do a few more sketches as buddy Jimmy Fallon's show mascot.

They were always really funny.

(4.0/10)

Tierra Whack – “World Wide Whack”

Anyone who's last name is Whack, i.e. cut or blow, doesn't actually need to invent a fictional character.

The rapper from Philadelphia, born in 1995, did it anyway.

On her first “real” album, the clownish, reeled “Whack” takes you through a day of her life – and also through the history of the hip-hop genre, and oh my, pop entertainment itself.

A bit crazy?

Sure, but Whack already showed in 2018 with her quasi-debut “Whack World” that she can do pretty much everything, condensed into 15 minutes and one-minute tracks that almost explode with ideas.

This was followed by three EPs called “Rap?”, “Pop?” and “R&B?” and asked questions about the meaning of musical genres, the boundaries of which Whack repeatedly dissolves with relish.

The British "Guardian" recently reverently called her "America's most creative rapper," while others have long since mentioned her in the same breath as innovators like Janelle Monáe or André 3000. All justified if you just look at the range between touchingly raw ballads like "Difficult" or " 27 Club", in which Whack sings about depression, the burden of fame and suicidal thoughts, and grandiose silliness like the "Shower Song".

In it, Whack makes fun of herself by claiming that she sounds great singing, at least as good as Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys and Britney Spears.

But only in the shower.

Musically, she uses an eclectic mix of Sesame Street lalala, African drumming and lots of synth humming to make it clear that although she has the necessary skills, she will never play by the rules: "I will never behave," she defies.

When in doubt, she simply rivets you with her concentrated talent.

(8.3/10)