Star-Crossed

‘star-crossed’ demands to be listened to in one go. ... She has calcified a range of difficult, overwhelming, sometimes liberating emotions into a time capsule marking the most turbulent time of her life. This is heart on sleeve storytelling.

It’s an album where she can be not so much “happy and sad at the same time” as heartsick, defiant, nostalgic, self-doubting, sassy, rueful and flatlining in the same divorce-court feedback loop. ... And one of the best things about “Star-Crossed” is its boldly weird but highly satisfying finale.

If the tone for most of the record's first half tips heavily toward 2 a.m. regrets and tempos that rarely rise above a broken heartbeat, the BPMs shift, however briefly, on "Breadwinner." With its tart warnings to steer clear of a meal-ticket man who "wants your shimmer/To make him feel bigger/Until he starts feeling insecure," the track feels like a buoyant callback to the chicken-fried wit of past standouts like "High Horse" and "Biscuits."

While she leaves her full Western get-up at the door, Musgraves continues to bring her Southern sensibilities with her, with a work that reaches to the soul of the country genre, if not the most obvious musical trappings.

Musgraves' superpower is her ability to convey complex emotions via concise phrasing, which means quieter songs such as "Good Wife" and "If This Was A Movie" hit especially hard. [Nov 2021, p.30]

She never appears to be singing to convince you — her voice, which is modest in scale but deadly precise, connotes the power of malaise and exhaustion. It is regret embodied.

Although the album is comprised of downhearted themes, there’s still something cheerful to be found within Musgraves’ vocals that makes us somehow grateful to be sad. You feel happy and sad at the same time because it’s evident through the singer’s existing discography that she knows people who have known sadness know themselves better thereafter.

It’s not quite her Blood On The Tracks, but it’s a record that’s similarly compelling to listen to.

It’s an intricate project – the record also comes with an accompanying 50-minute film – that could collapse under the weight of its concept. Bolstered by its author’s frank pen, though, and instilled with a sense of hope, it’s a powerful listen.

‘star-crossed’ mirrors the pain of a breakup, from turbulence through heartbreak to hope and self-acceptance. It’s here where she fully embraces Nashville storytelling. Far from spinning distant, third-person tales, each track feels incredibly personal.

Musgraves’ storytelling skills and musical instincts are as strong as ever on star-crossed. While it’s not perfect, love rarely is, and breakups never are.

Musgraves’s follow-up, Star-Crossed, is just as effortlessly melodic and accessible. But it’s also more eclectic, far afield of modern radio tropes, either of the pop or country varieties.

Its seams show at every moment, in ways that feel artful—spoken interludes, thematic callbacks, a disorienting cover of Violeta Parra’s eternal “Gracias a la Vida” that shifts between settings like the grand finale of an Oscar-bait drama—and others that feel forced.

star-crossed is a definite departure from Golden Hour in many ways, but this effort still retains enough of that magic to feel like a connector from her previous era to the present moment.

The maturity and class displayed here is a pleasant surprise (which has nothing to do with Musgraves, and everything to do with divorce/breakup album stereotypes), and the experience is unexpectedly serene given the music's content and overarching themes, but otherwise star-crossed is merely nice: a lukewarm batch of songs eager to saturate backgrounds rather than absorb your full attention.

Listen closely, it's evident that Star-Crossed is a quintessential divorce record--the story is laid out quite clearly in its 15 songs--but in a practical sense, the album delivers sophisticated mood music, providing a soothing soundtrack for all manners of quiet domestic activities.

The subdued star-crossed is unlikely to garner the same commercial success as Golden Hour. It isn't carried by standout singles or big beats, but the album isn't seeking that kind of external validation. It stands alone in its vulnerability.

The dramatic title-track introduction and heart-split-in-half album cover are clever misdirections on a record that’s most moving when it’s not forcing any heart-on-the-page catharsis and instead leaning on what Musgraves has always done best: documenting the terrifying, numbing messiness of mixed emotions.

“Star-Crossed” is actually a less emotional experience than the blissed-out “Golden Hour,” which practically vibrated with feeling. ... Musgraves’ writing on “Star-Crossed” is squishier and more prone to cliché than on “Golden Hour” or her earlier albums.

The tidy landing constrains otherwise appreciably ambiguous songwriting that feels true to the wayward flux of Musgraves’ feelings – of the confusing aftermath of divorce, peppered with relief, mystery, disappointment. It feels like the first time this iconoclast has stuck to the script.

This record doesn’t find the often-brilliant Musgraves on her sharpest, Dolly Parton-est form. She delivers more platitudes than usual; her melodic shifts often lack their tangier twists. But the sadness and everydayness of her breakup does breathe slowly and honestly through the songs.