Kacey Musgraves - star-crossed ALBUM REVIEW

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I really do love the retro aesthetic of the cover art, though.


I don’t cover country music that much here, but I honestly think I should try and give modern country a shot. Why not let it be Kacey Musgraves? Her last album, 2018’s Golden Hour, ended up taking the coveted Album of the Year trophy at the 2019 Grammy Awards and she essentially became a critical darling. In between albums, she ended up going through a divorce, and most of the content on this album is based on Musgraves’ emotional reactions to past events. It could be good, and with the appealing title of star-crossed and a nice album cover, I feel like this could at least be good. So, is star-crossed any good? Let’s see.

Look, I don’t wanna start off being negative at all, but what the hell happened with the writing? Even if I’m not the biggest country fan, I do think Musgraves has been a good writer. If this was the first record I’ve heard from her, I wouldn’t have believed you if you told me her writing was good. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just incredibly basic and bland. I kind of had inklings on that in Golden Hour, but that was made up for by how catchy those songs were. The songs on here are just, again, so bland. Musgraves still has a good voice and the album from an instrumentation perspective is nice, but when it comes to new country music that isn’t the subgenre of ‘bro-country,’ I tend to look at the lyrics to see if they stand out. They tend to make or break an album like this to me, and in this case, this really didn’t do much for me.

As I’ve already stated, I think star-crossed is a bit of a miss. While Kacey Musgraves still has it in the vocal department and the production is pretty nice, the bland writing on here absolutely kills this album to me. Coming hot off of divorce has made for some of the most compelling music ever, and this is simply not a good example of it. Better luck next time, champ.


5/10


Listen here

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star-crossed is an Interscope release.

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