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***2024 ALBUM OF THE YEAR***
#1 | Kacey Musgraves | Deeper Well
MCA Nashville/Interscope
“Deeper Well finds the resolute artist embracing the inevitable vicissitudes of life and love, finding strength and meaning within the ever-present dichotomy of joy and pain, and welcoming the new experiences that invariably await her in the future.
Listeners pining for a return to the clever playfulness of her first two records (2013’s Same Trailer Different Park and 2015’s Pageant Material), a rehash of the luminous shimmer of Golden Hour (2018) or the proliferation of star-crossed’s pop-driven dynamics may be disappointed upon initial engagement with Deeper Well. But these same listeners would be well-advised to reevaluate how they engage with these albums, as Deeper Well deserves to be embraced neither as epilogue of what’s come before nor as prologue of what comes next in Musgraves’ repertoire.
Instead, Deeper Well exists as a sterling, standalone statement of intent rooted in the inspiration of its creator’s here and now. And it is precisely Musgraves’ unwillingness to conform to others’ expectations or to recycle the tried-and-true that makes her one of the most dynamic artists of our time, as she cultivates a rich musical oeuvre that listeners will have the pleasure of diving deeper into for years and years to come.” [Read Justin Chadwick’s full review here]
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