Fire's Chill Pick - March 2026

 Hey everyone, you all know it’s that time of the month to review a Chill Pick!! Let’s go for the lead single for one of my most anticipated albums of 2026!!

Kacey Musgraves - Dry Spell

Release: March 11, 2026

Genres: Country Pop, Contemporary Country, Tejano Music, Western

If you know me at all, you already know I’m a big Kacey Musgraves stan. I’ve repeatedly said on this blog that Golden Hour is my favorite album of all time and Deeper Well was my personal album of the year for 2024. So you can imagine that I was excited to hear that Kacey announced an album set to drop in May. I will admit though that even though I adore both Golden Hour and Deeper Well, my fear was that she was gonna start retreading those textures without really reinventing herself. It’s a formula that I do adore, no question, but you can only retread a formula, even one I adore, so many times before you start losing me (see how Hoang really turned me from a fan to a really jaded listener save for “Are You Still There”). And I didn’t want that to happen for Kacey as I know that she can be a really ambitious and daring writer when she wants to. It’s a large part of why Same Trailer Different Park is often considered as one of the best albums of 2013, some even going as far as to call it one of the best of the 2010s.

But that takes us to “Dry Spell”, the lead single to Kacey’s upcoming 7th studio album (though really it’s her 10th album if you count her demos in the 2000s lol), Middle Of Nowhere. She teased the single by putting up posters of a phone number all around her home state of Texas (or did it extend beyond there? I only got the number from a Pop Base tweet lol). If you called the number, you were greeted with a voicemail that played a snippet of the song. You were then sent a text inviting you to join a community to receive updates from Kacey. The one update I got prior to this song’s release was this photo if you were curious haha (this scene wasn’t even in the music video so idk what this was about lol):

 The snippet sounded quite promising when I dialed the number, so with the full song now out...holy shit, this might be the horniest song Kacey has ever released haha. I mean, from “lonely with a capital h” to “Ain't nobody's tool up in my shed” to “And I'm tired of keeping my hands to myself” to especially “And nobody but the chickens are getting laid”, she isn’t exactly being subtle here (same with that music video lol). The song is basically this:

Musically, this sounds really strong too, with that pure country groove and the funky bassline. Full disclosure, I actually relistened to Same Trailer Different Park for this review trying to pin down a reference point—but this doesn't really remind me of anything Kacey has done before, and that works to the song’s strength because it’s a different direction for Kacey that isn’t retreading the same dream country tones of Golden Hour and Deeper Well.

What’s more, I genuinely can see a timeline where this song is the Hot 100 success she has worked hard for all these years (solo, at least). 2026 so far has been a shockingly strong year for women in country, Ella Langley has the biggest song in the country right now and Megan Moroney was able to get a full on album bomb!! I mean, fuck, this week it's already become her best ever solo debut on the Hot 100!!

So to sum up, this a goofy and horny swerve that promises some damn good things for Kacey’s upcoming album. It doesn’t remotely match her best because the vocal mixing feels a bit off, but I still give this a strong 9/10, let’s make this a hit!!