Editor’s Note: A version of this story also appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox.
As I write this, I’m staring down the barrel of a trip to my family home in Ohio. I say “staring down the barrel” (sorry, Mom) because going back to where you grew up can be complicated. For me, it’s a complete emotional whirlpool of excitement, guilt, and nostalgia.
What I quickly learned, especially because I am often solo road-tripping the 8+ hour drive from the East Coast, is that there’s at least one tiny defense against that confusing swirl of feelings: the right playlist.
Luckily, two of this spring’s most-anticipated albums — Kacey Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere and Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide — speak directly to the baggage surrounding a person’s hometown: leaving it behind, longing for it, and returning after years away.
Music video for “The Great Divide” by Noah Kahan (2026). Credit: Noah Kahan Vevo via YouTube.
Released in late April and early May, both records performed well on the charts, with Kahan earning his first Billboard 200 No. 1. Yet Middle of Nowhere and The Great Divide are about as sonically distant from one another as the artists’ respective rural hometowns: Mineola, Texas for Musgraves and Strafford, Vermont for Kahan.
Kahan’s confessional folk rock — which ranges from sweeping, windows-down anthems to acoustic, campfire jams — fits his New England sensibility. Meanwhile, Musgraves lovingly pays homage to her Texan heritage, blending bluegrass, Western swing, and Mexican musical influences (think: waltzing accordions, plenty of pedal steel guitar, and pared-down production).
Still, lyrically, there are moments when the albums are almost talking to each other. Sure, Middle of Nowhere centers on romance, while The Great Divide is more concerned with family and friendships. But each bravely face that tension between staying put in your hometown and hitting the road.
Going Pains
Album cover for Kacey Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere (2026).
“The place I currently live at is barely even on the map,” Musgraves croons on “Uncertain, TX”, a song calling out the particular brand of cowboy who can’t quite commit. It’s a track about betrayal, the lovers that cut loose without looking back: “You think you really know somebody/then they up and walk right out the door.”
On the scathing “Dashboard,” Kahan echoes that same sting of abandonment. His speaker is more outwardly resentful, reminding the person who left him behind that they’ll never outrun themselves: “Look at you go, crossin’ state lines, with your shadow…turns out that you’re still an a**hole.”
As skillfully as they capture the POV of the “stayer,” Musgraves and Kahan clearly also know how it feels to be the “goer,” or, even more loaded, the “returner.”
Both stress the specific growing pains that come with leaving rural life in the rearview. There’s the ache of losing what’s intimately familiar (“They always say there ain’t no place like your home,” Musgraves cautions on “Abeline”) and suddenly finding yourself a little fish in a bigger pond. And when it’s time to return home, that brings unique friction, too. If you come back a new person, you risk stirring up resentment from the people who knew the old you (“Got bored in the New Hampshire space/You left us for the New York Times”, Kahan sings on “Haircut”).
Add a public breakup or the struggle of newfound fame into the mix, and you’ve certainly got enough material to make an album. Or two.
Where the Heart Is
As Musgraves explains on the Middle of Nowhere title track, heading “past the Dairy Queen” means escape: a retreat from expectations, cell service, and “reckless men who don’t know what they want.” Here, returning to your rural roots brings peace.
But as the uneasy-yet-breezy “Loneliest Girl” and its clever counterpart, “Dry Spell” reveal, it can also be isolating. What seems like freedom on a good day — ”I don’t have to navigate nobody’s drama” — might feel more like alienation in the wake of heartbreak.
Kahan is similarly caught between affection and ambivalence. The Great Divide features plenty of love for vast stretches of sky, county line campgrounds, and down-to-Earth community (the warmth of the final track, “Dan”, an homage to a best friend back home, is the best evidence of this).
A complicating factor haunts nearly every song, though: guilt over moving away. At times, the lyrics read like a diaristic reflection on Kahan’s own overnight rise to fame, a nod to how his personal relationship with home has irreversibly shifted since his breakout hit, “Stick Season”, in 2022.
Album cover for Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide (2026).
The fact that both musicians grew up in areas with sub-5,000 populations lends authenticity to these depictions of rurality. No one would dare confuse them with the tourists playing dress-up that Musgraves picks apart on “Everybody Wants to be a Cowboy” or the Cybertruck-driving transplants Kahan slams on “Headed North”.
Neither artist shies away from the contradictions that come with loving a place and needing to leave it behind, at least for a time. It’s an honesty that everyone — en route to Mineola, Strafford, or some other perfectly imperfect home — can appreciate.
This article first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, recommendations, retrospectives, and more. Join the mailing list today to have future editions delivered straight to your inbox.
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