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Sep 9, 2021Listen 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.
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Sep 16, 2021‘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.
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Sep 10, 2021star-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.
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Sep 8, 2021‘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.
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Sep 9, 2021If 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."
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Sep 9, 2021The 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.
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Sep 21, 2021“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.
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Sep 13, 2021It’s not quite her Blood On The Tracks, but it’s a record that’s similarly compelling to listen to.
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Sep 9, 2021It’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.
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Sep 7, 2021Musgraves’ 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.
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Sep 9, 2021Its 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.
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Sep 13, 2021Although 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.
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Sep 3, 2021The 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.
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Sep 3, 2021Musgraves’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.
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Sep 13, 2021The 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.
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Sep 3, 2021While 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.
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Sep 10, 2021The 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.
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Sep 9, 2021This 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.
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Sep 9, 2021A record that has surpassed all of the greatness her previous efforts entailed. Exceeding the status of a collection of songs, instead star-crossed takes us on a journey from beginning to end with bound-to-be hits like “Justified” and “Cherry Blossom” along for the ride whilst perfectly conveying a story that yet has to find its ending.
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Sep 14, 2021She 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.
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UncutSep 17, 2021Musgraves' 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]
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Sep 3, 2021The balance of star-crossed is full of cringe-worthy lyrics and failed efforts to move further into pop (“good wife”) and dance (“what doesn’t kill me,” “breadwinner”) realms. Produced by the same team as Golden Hour (Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk), it’s hard to assess how that album’s gossamer sheen, that enchantingly revealed subtle hooks and melodies, gave way to almost nothing that stands out.
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Sep 16, 2021It’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.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 126 out of 161
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Mixed: 12 out of 161
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Negative: 23 out of 161
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Sep 10, 2021
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Sep 10, 2021Queen Of Country music is back.. this album is the new album of the year, Musgraves surpassed himself.
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Sep 10, 2021This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view.