Hot Off The Press: Kacey Musgraves' "star-crossed"

With her 2018 Album of the Year winning record “Golden Hour,” Kacey Musgraves cemented herself in the young american psyche as an absolute icon. It could be said that her popularity in the last couple years is a driving factor in the trendiness of the western and cosmic cowgirl aesthetics, also driven in part by artists like Lil Nas X, Orville Peck and the enduring public adoration of Dolly Parton. Even if you say you don’t like country, it would be difficult to find a person who doesn’t find any kind of enjoyment in Musgraves’ repertoire. Musgraves’ first studio album “Same Trailer Different Park” is undeniably an excellent country record with some great banjo picking: particularly the last three songs of the record are worth a listen if you aren’t familiar. 2018’s “Golden Hour,” which won Grammy awards for Best Country Album and Album of the Year, strays farther from concrete country, infusing the characteristic twang with psychedelic hippie and disco vibes. Musgraves’ latest offering, “star-crossed,” released Friday, Sep. 10, is a heady sequel to the love and possibility of “Golden Hour,” working through the story of her ill-fated marriage. If Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” is the Gen Z breakup album of the year, than Kacey Musgraves’ “star-crossed” is its millennial equivalent.

If you’re expecting a bombastic middle-finger-to-your-ex experience, this is not the album for you. Musgraves explores her breakup through a quiet and reflective lens: no one is fully to blame, it just didn’t work out the way she hoped. Flavored with classical Spanish guitar throughout, “star-crossed” conjures Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film “Romeo + Juliet.” It’s rich in tragedy and in style — a high-fashion spaghetti western, if you will. In fact, the entire record almost reads like a Shakespearean-esque tragedy. The album “star-crossed” opens with the title track of the same name, almost literally a Shakespearean prologue in the vein of “Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona where we lay our scene” etc. The eighth song of the album, “breadwinner” puts Musgraves’ disco-country style we all fell in love with on “Golden Hour” back on the front burner. This is perhaps the sharpest Musgraves gets toward her ex: “He wants your shimmer to make him feel bigger until he starts feeling insecure. I wish somebody would’ve told me the truth: see, he’s never gonna know what to do with a woman like you.”

The tone of “star-crossed” is very mellow throughout, perhaps lacking the climactic song listeners may want. Maybe the feeling of being a little let down in excitement is the feeling you are meant to be left with. While listening to this record you really feel Musgraves’ desire for things to work out, her pain when it's clear they won’t, and her acceptance in moving on to bigger and better things by the end. Maybe to be a better capital “A” Album “star-crossed” could have benefitted from a high-energy single, but then it wouldn’t be the dreamy waltz through sadness that it is. Musgraves tells us to be sad when you need to be sad, to embrace the good times, to know your worth and to know your happiness is important above all else. One of the final lines from the closing track “gracias a la vida” enncompasses “star-crossed” perfectly: “Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto. Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto” (Thanks to life, which has given me so much. It gave me laughter and it gave me tears.)