This week, this tension is captured in a pair of new albums: “Golden Hour,” the third major label album by Kacey Musgraves, and “Girl Going Nowhere,” the major label debut of Ashley McBryde. Ms. Musgraves has been toying with country music orthodoxy for the last few years, and she has begun moving that experimentation from her songwriting to the production of her songs. Ms. McBryde focuses on crisp songwriting and a wide-tent approach to influences, taking in blues and Southern rock.

To discuss these albums on this week’s Popcast, Mr. Caramanica was joined by Natalie Weiner, a music and sports journalist who is a staff writer at Bleacher Report and who recently profiled Ms. Musgraves for the cover of Billboard.

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