Just one week after Paste Music took stock of everything we knew about Kacey Musgraves’ fourth album so far, the country star has finally announced it in earnest, detailing star-crossed (Interscope Records / UMG Nashville) and a forthcoming, Paramount+-exclusive film (dir. Bardia Zeinali) of the same name, both arriving on Sept. 10. The album’s title track and opener is out now, as is the Musgrave-starring film’s trailer.
The follow-up to her beloved 2018 “galactic country” record Golden Hour, star-crossed is a 15-track LP constructed like a classic tragedy, with five songs in each of the album’s three acts. Musgraves reunited with her Golden Hour co-producers and writers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian on the album, recording it in just under three weeks in Nashville earlier this year. Musgraves has characterized star-crossed as “a post-divorce” heartbreak record grounded in realism, inspired by her summer 2020 split from her ex-husband, fellow musician Ruston Kelly.
“star-crossed” is a sweeping post-mortem on their, well, star-crossed love, with Musgraves lamenting, “Did we fly too high just to get burned by the sun?” over mournful Spanish guitar, lush strings and subtle bass. Cinematically expansive and nakedly sorrowful, it’s an emotional gut punch, and a powerful prelude to Musgraves’ heartbreak record, with a swelling crescendo capturing all the pathos of her tale of woe and hope.
Star-crossed: the film “takes the music from the studio to the screen with gorgeous visuals and a sense of heightened reality, envisioned by Musgraves and Zeinali,” per a press release, and is lensed by Oscar-nominated cinematographer Matthew Libatique (A Star Is Born, Black Swan). “We wanted it to feel cinematic and epic without compromising the heart and the emotion,” Zeinali says, “to feel fantastical and heightened and tell her story through the lens of art and fashion.” Shot in Los Angeles, the film features cameos from Eugene Levy, Victoria Pedretti (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, You), Princess Nokia, RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Symone and comedian Megan Stalter.
Hear “star-crossed” and see the film trailer below, and find Musgraves’ 2015 Daytrotter session and the details of her new album further down.
star-crossed Tracklist:
01. star-crossed
02. good wife
03. cherry blossom
04. simple times
05. if this was a movie..
06. justified
07. angel
08. breadwinner
09. camera roll
10. easier said
11. hookup scene
12. keep lookin’ up
13. what doesn’t kill me
14. there is a light
15. gracias a la vida
star-crossed Album Art:
