Surely, you’ve seen…The Balls.
No one expected that country music in the summer of 2026 would be illuminated by the sparkly, gloriously perverse glow of a set of disco testicles. But that low-hanging display, the centerpiece prop of Kacey Musgraves’ Middle of Nowhere Tour, has come to sum up country’s year of horniness. Amplified by the whirling of Musgraves’ lonely-girl washing machine — not to mention her use of eggplant emojis, an extremely steamy video, and even a lube line — this has undoubtedly been the genre’s wet hot American summer.
But it’s not just Musgraves. Nashville first started heating up back in 2024, when Riley Green released “Worst Way,” an ode to desire that contained not a single juvenile metaphor (“Put away anything that’ll break,” Green sang plainly), and it’s only smoldered since. There is the art for Lainey Wilson’s single “Phone, Keys, Wallet,” which features a close-up of what we can assume is her husband Duck Hodges’ hands on her rear end. Miranda Lambert’s “Crisco” talks about afternoon delights to a danceable disco beat, and Carly Pearce and Green’s “If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay” is all about what happens when you can’t resist a carnal impulse.
Carter Faith and Wyatt Flores’ “Nothin’ Better to Do” does the same, but is a bit more about a boredom lay than true chemistry. Even Luke Combs is getting in on the action of singing about getting some action: “Soon As I Get Home” finds him rushing back to his wife to start “makin’ up for all my gone.”
Though country music is a genre that is nowhere near as puritanical as its often stereotyped, it is unique to see songs like these finding such an overt embrace — and a lack of pushback. Especially for women. In 1999, the Chicks rattled Music Row with the mere mention of “mattress dancing” in their song “Sin Wagon,” following in the footsteps of Loretta Lynn’s “Rated X” and “The Pill.” Lambert’s masterful “Vice,” about indulging in some no-strings one-night-stands, never achieved the Number One spot it deserved back in 2016. Country radio has often only allowed its women to be sexual when they’re dancing in jean shorts in a music video made by a man. But now? Musgraves’ “Dry Spell” has turned up on the airwaves and even logged a risqué performance at the ACM Awards.
It’s easy to look at Musgraves’ gleaming truck nuts and chuckle — that’s at least part of her point. But she’s always been a lover of puns: her branded line of lube promises to “keep the dry spells away and the good times coming.” Sometimes, she knows, you need to get people to laugh to pay attention. By mixing frank presentations of female pleasure with a dash of camp, Musgraves is pushing the genre to have discussions that have formerly been taboo, if not ignored altogether.
So, what’s changed that has allowed Nashville to embrace a horniness that would make even the genre’s late king of sultriness, Conway Twitty, blush? Lyz Lenz, author of the newsletter Men Yell At Me, thinks its a symptom of just how lonely we are all. “Lonely, as the great poet sang, ‘with a capital H,’” Lenz says. “Everything about our modern life is pushing us away from each other. AI pushes us toward chatbots instead of our friends. The economic climate pushes us home instead of nights out on the town. And dating apps make finding a partner less appealing than shopping for a microwave. As a result, people are disconnected, seeking human touch, and yes, deeply horny. It makes sense especially that it’s seeping into the lyrics of younger musicians.”
In other words, when times are tough, people get busy. “I wonder if some of this is about the state of the economy,” says critic Steacy Easton, author of Why Tammy Wynette Matters. “Looking, for example, at Twitty and Dolly [Parton’s] horny work in the mid 1970s, there was a kind of stability that could be made in love making while the rest of the world was completely on fire.”
It makes sense that these horny tendencies have been articulated often through Seventies disco inspirations. Musgraves is more metaphorical (those disco balls), while Lambert leans in. Melding country and disco — à la “Crisco,” as Lambert coined it — was always a place where the genre got to be a little steamier. As Easton points out, Parton, who cut numerous sultry hits like “Baby I’m Burnin’” that were equally ready for the dance floor as the bedroom, thrived with hedonistic 1970s textures.
What has yet to be seen is whether the Summer of Horny Country can lead to a future where sex-forward songs are not only released by “cishet folks of conventional attractiveness,” Easton says. “I think in this reactionary moment, robust, straight sexuality of a very particular kind can be thought to be liberating, and maybe it is. But maybe it could also reinforce heterosexuality.” Easton is waiting for when an openly queer country artist on a major Music Row label — not just straight folks in tight jeans — gets to release their own “fuck anthem.” Lambert, for her part, launched Crisco with a drag brunch at CMA Fest, making sure that the saucy fun wasn’t limited to one narrow view of sexuality.
For now, perhaps we’re best to look toward Johnny Blue Skies (a.k.a. Sturgill Simpson) & the Dark Clouds, who, despite not exactly existing within the bounds of country music, released an entire album dedicated to anyone and everyone screwing their way through these dreary times. “Four’s a fuckin’ party,” Simpson sings, “where everybody comes.”
