Kacey Musgraves’ newest album is a must listen.
By Millie Walkenhorst
Kacey Musgraves grasped the attention of the public when her 2018 album, Golden Hour launched into success, winning album of the year at the Grammys. In her long-awaited follow up, Kacey, dancing the line between pop and country, dives deeper into what is more often the reality of love: heartbreak. Literally, “setting the scene,” as Musgraves explains herself, Kacey chose to release “star-crossed” and “justified” as singles, preparing her listeners for a new era of her near-decade long career. Following the timeline of her marriage and recent divorce, Kacey begins the album with songs like “good wife,” and “cherry blossom,” which detail her budding romance and desires to be successful in her marriage. She then moves into feelings of marital frustration, anger, sadness, and then finally moving on, in the Spanish-influenced finale, “gracias a la vida,” originally written by Violeta Parra, a Chilean composer.
Musgraves shows incredible growth from her naive look on love in Golden Hour with star-crossed, where her rose-colored glasses are removed. She opens up, revealing more about her personal life than she has in any album before, and it certainly pays off in her phenomenal lyricism. With lyrics like, “two lovers ripped right at the seams, they woke up from the perfect dream,” and “I won’t cry when the cold wind blows, gonna let it shine,” she takes listeners through an emotional journey that covers everything from growing up to dating after divorce. The album features a girl-power anthem called “breadwinner,” and then presents a stark contrast on the song “camera roll,” which details looking back on positive times of a relationship through photos, when you know the positive memories you associate with those photos aren’t what was reality.
Breaking hearts, she pens, ”What a trip, the way you can flip, through all the good parts of it, I shouldn’t have done it.” She connects her past album, Golden Hour, to the present, with lyrics like, “There’s one, where we look so in love, before we lost all the sun, and I made you take it.” She frequently refers to her past album, as, “the sun,” on par with its title. Kacey also created a short movie based on her lyrics and story, to truly immerse the audience in the narrative she is telling. Her ability to captivate an audience, given the stark contrast between Golden Hour and star-crossed, exemplifies her incredible lyrical talents, as well as her undeniable vocal talent. Whether you are experiencing heartbreak or not, star-crossed is the perfect album to bring the feeling to life.