Kacey Musgraves takes Boston to the ‘Middle of Nowhere’ 

Kacey Musgraves at TD Garden, Boston, Friday, Aug. 28, 2026.

With her new album and tour, both dubbed “Middle of Nowhere,” Kacey Musgraves is returning to her roots, but on her own terms. 

Since incorporating pop, psychedelic, and indie-folk influences on her 2018 masterpiece “Golden Hour,” Musgraves has become the preferred country artist of people who think they don’t like country. 

That’s not her fault, exactly. Her artistic independence and socially progressive lyrics may have led to a contentious relationship with the Nashville-industrial complex early in her career, but even as her songwriting grew more introspective and genre-agnostic, she never stopped evangelizing for her country heroes or taking pride in her twang. 

Now that she’s a big enough star to sell out the TD Garden, as she did Friday night, Musgraves can play country exactly how she wants. 

Her seven-piece band included a pedal steel guitarist and, in a nod to the Mexican influence on Texas music, an accordionist, but it also had a guy on keytar. 

As the musicians cooked on a circular stage in the middle of the arena floor, Musgraves strolled around a star-shaped platform at its center or took a spin on the moving sidewalk-style perimeter, which, appropriately enough, got its debut on “Merry Go ‘Round.” 

The setlist skewed heavily towards “Middle of Nowhere,” a pensive record inspired by Musgraves learning to embrace solitude. 

It doesn’t sound like a crowd-pleaser on paper, but live the sneakily hooky melodies and moody instrumentals had the audience hanging on Musgraves’ every word. 

It helps that those words are the cleverest Musgraves has written in some time, as she reasserted her mastery of country-lyric fundamentals like the winking double entendre (“Dry Spell”) and the evocative story song (“Abilene”). 

During a short speech about her love of country, Musgraves mused that the genre’s enduring popularity reflects a desire for simplicity in complicated times. 

To that end, she also said that with this tour she wanted to replicate the ambiance of a gig she might catch in her tiny hometown of Golden, Texas. 

That didn’t stop her from indulging in some light pyrotechnics, though she did seem very nervous when a stray ember from an indoor firework burned for a few minutes too long. 

The one truly ridiculous pop-star moment of the night came during “Rhinestoned,” which Musgraves sang while sitting on two giant disco balls whose resemblance to a certain part of the male anatomy was no coincidence. 

As Musgraves gleefully declared, “this is what it looks like when nobody tells me no!” 

The focus on “Middle of Nowhere” didn’t leave much room for the rest of Musgraves’ discography. 

Her last album, “Deeper Well,” has already been dropped from the setlist entirely, and anyone hoping the pivot back to country would inspire her to dig up some gems from her first two records had to settle for hearing “Merry Go ‘Round” and “Follow Your Arrow” again. 

Both of those songs still sound great, though, with the band giving the latter a welcome shot of honky-tonk energy. 

The one older Musgraves album that still gets plenty of love is, naturally, “Golden Hour.” While a moody, accordion-heavy arrangement of “High Horse” would have fit right in on “Middle of Nowhere,” the transcendent beauty of “Butterflies” and “Slow Burn” felt as miraculously singular as ever. 

Meanwhile, “Space Cowboy” gave Musgraves the power ballad moment every great arena show needs, with fake snow coming down and fog shrouding the stage as she belted the final chorus. 

At this point, Musgraves took a moment to express her love and gratitude to Dolly Parton. As an artist who moves freely between country and pop, in large part due to the loyal support of her LGBTQ+ fans, Musgraves knows just how much she owes to Parton, and she rose to the occasion with her tribute. 

The song she dedicated to Parton, “Rainbow,” struck just the right note of chin-up resilience in the face of sorrow, and she followed it with a heartfelt version of “Here You Come Again.”

Musgraves has some history with that one: she used to play it live regularly, and you can even see her sing it at a Parton tribute concert back in 2019 with, of all people, Katy Perry. 

Musgraves closed with a cover of George Strait’s “All My Ex’s Live In Texas,” complete with new lyrics she wrote from a woman’s perspective. 

It worked as a neat summation of her relationship with country, fusing her love of the genre’s past with a determination to shape its future. 

As for the present, the cowboy-hatted and boot-scootin’ Boston crowd would probably agree that Musgraves has that on lock.

Setlist for Kacey Musgraves 

• Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy
• Dry Spell
• justified
• High Horse
• Merry Go ‘Round
• Butterflies
• Abilene
• Back on the Wagon
• I Believe in Ghosts
• Uncertain, TX
• Horses and Divorces
• (Hey Baby) ¿Qué pasó? (Texas Tornados cover)
• Golden Hour
• Loneliest Girl
• Rhinestoned
• Mexico Honey
• Middle of Nowhere
• Slow Burn
• Space Cowboy
• Rainbow
• Here You Come Again (Dolly Parton cover)
• Follow Your Arrow
• All My Ex’s Live in Texas (George Strait cover)