For a small-town, east Texas gal who once sang, “You can take me out of the country/But you can’t take the country out of me,” Kacey Musgraves sure makes a great pop star. On “High Horse,” the latest single from her forthcoming album Golden Hour, the outlaw country singer offers a marvelous Bee Gees-tinged disco track, the type of pop-country blend one might expect from Miley Cyrus or Lady Gaga. But whereas both those artists have stumbled attempting similar fusions, missing the mark with their cowboy hats and rockabilly-meets-club swing, the three-time Country Music Award winner Musgraves effortlessly makes the transition from rusty steel guitars to an intoxicating discoteque vibe.

But the Kacey we first fell for hasn’t disappeared completely; her familiar honky tonk guitar licks and suffer-no-fools lyrics make the leap to the light-up floor, too. “Everyone knows someone that kills the buzz/Every time they open up their mouth,” she sings. Her voice is layered over itself, sleeker and more polished than ever, instead of the twangy modulation of her more traditional country croons. She also incorporates orchestral arrangements, a signature of disco’s golden era, with subtle banjo plucks. Flipping the traditional sense of the idiom, Musgraves tells her lackluster lover to keep riding that “high horse”—since, realistically, she knows he “ain’t ever gonna come down.” Similarly, it's exciting to hear the phrase “giddy up” against the glitz and glam of disco instead of an expected cowboy narrative, in a delivery that doesn't feel kitsch. Her bedazzled lasso whips up and down (literally: there’s a sound bite), paralleling the up-and-down boogie motion of the ‘70s fad.

Recently, after falling in love and finding comfort in her personal life, Musgraves was worried this newfound happiness would affect her writing. “When I got really happy, I was like, ‘Man. Am I gonna be able to write anymore?’” she admitted. Turns out, that fear was unfounded: By embracing her pop instincts, Musgraves has opened up a fascinating new door for herself.