Musgraves’s 2018 Album, Golden Hour, was a sunny, mellow record, reflecting on falling in love, that combined the staple guitars and banjo’s of country music, with a new modern and genre-blending version of country that attracted so many avid listeners. With the incredible reception of Golden Hour and its commercial success among new listeners, Musgraves has experienced a lot of new growth and fame, as well as the societal pressure that comes with it.
Now, Musgraves uses Star Crossed to tell a trite tale in country music: an inevitable heartbreak and the divorce that follows. In the opening song and title track, “Star Crossed”, Musgraves uses one verse to tell the story simply, “I signed the papers yesterday/You came and took your things away/I moved out of the home we made/And gave you back your name.” This introduction moves smoothly into a more in depth description of the stages of grief that have followed Musgraves throughout writing the album.
She starts out reminiscing about love itself, how she views it now, knowing that it eventually fell apart. In “Good Wife”, Musgraves details her initial desire to please her husband, “God, help me be a good wife”, while also satirically acknowledging the sexist duties of a wife with lines like, “And if he comеs home stressed out, I can pack him a bowl/Just let him be himself, don’t try to control”.
Moving into “Simple Times” and “If This Was a Movie”, Musgraves continues to reflect on her ruined romance, but from the perspective of a wistful outsider. In “Simple Times”, Musgraves imagines her relationship like a video game that she can walk away from whenever it gets too hard, “Wish that I could put this game on pause/Skip this round, take the headset off”. Unfortunately though, this is only a dream, and eventually, we all must climb the mountains before us, no matter how treacherous. Musgraves continues to explore the fantasial outside viewpoint through the next track. Using the classic Hollywood trope, she imagines her relationship as a movie, “If this was a movie I’d be surprised…You’d hold my face/Say we’re being stupid/And we’d fall back into place”.
And of course, it wouldn’t be a breakup album without anger. “Breadwinner” is Musgraves most cynical and venomous song on the album. Here, Musgraves seethes in the fact that her husband, another singer-songwriter, could not handle her success and allowed his own ego make him red with envy. It’s a classic trope, born from sexism, where a husband cannot handle their wife being more successful or independent than himself.
By the last section of her album, Musgraves has reached acceptance and reconciliation within herself. With the chorus of “There is a Light”, Musgraves establishes her newfound hope, a phoenix rising from the ashes: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel/There is a light inside of me/There was a shadow of a doubt/But baby, it’s never going out/There is a light inside of me/There is a light”. She shows her audience that even out of grief comes newfound redemption and hope that no one can destroy.
Looking back at Golden Hour, it’s difficult to see how the same person who inspired the passionate joy throughout that album is the same one who caused the grief reflected on Star Crossed. Star Crossed goes to show how sometimes good things are’t meant to last, that while someone may be important, they aren’t meant to be your forever. It shows the full cycle of a relationship, from the blissful honeymoon stage to the very end. Musgraves has entered her “Divorce Hour” with complex emotions, and by the end the emotions are still complex but she has found peace with herself, ready to move onto the next hour of her life.
Check out the full album below:
