Kacey Musgraves - Star-Crossed

 

"Star-Crossed" is the 5th album by Texas born singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves.  Up until this point Kacey seems to have been on an upward trajectory with each album she has released.  Her early albums saw her firmly in the country genre before releasing her 4th album "Golden Hour" which saw her shift slightly to pop and more melodic melodies.  I got into Kacey's music when "Golden Hour" came out after seeing some good reviews of the album.  I thought "Golden Hour" was tremendous and was one of my favourite albums not only of the year it came out but the 2010s generally.  I then went through her back catalogue and found this album although special wasn't a one off.  She has serious talent and depth to her music.

So, when she dropped the title track "Star-Crossed" a couple of weeks ago I was excited for this album.  I felt that it was well suited to being the opener of the album as it really sets the scene with the opening lyrics:

Let me set the scene 
Two lovers ripped right at the seam
They woke up from the perfect dream
And then the darkness came

Now I'm not really a lyrics person but that to me are great lyrics and bringing in the listener and telling the listener what this album is going to be all about.  Obviously, it’s about Kacey's divorce so she's opening up about the whole experience and letting it all out on the album.  But the track "Star-crossed" is a nice track which builds and builds too.

Second single "justified" is just as good. the rhythm and the vocals are superb on this and the two tracks these 2 tracks which she released will slot very nicely into her setlists.  But in listening to the whole album while its definitely not bad, it's certainly not one of her strongest albums.  As you would guess because this album is about divorce the whole feel of the album is quite downbeat.  Now if you are reading this and going through divorce or have been through it in the past, this may be a great album to you as you can relate to what she is saying and how she is feeling.  But I haven't, so although there are good tracks on here, and by the way I'm not just talking about "Star-crossed" and "justified".  Tracks like "cherry blossom", "keep lookin' up" and "there is a light".  But these other tracks are good because they offer hope and optimism about the future whereas the other tracks are the sadder more reflective tracks.

Final track "gracias a la vida" is a poor track to finish off with as there are distorted vocals in this which don't work at all.  This is a 15-track album and for me there are too many tracks which don't hit the mark but at the same time because of her back catalogue there is enough for Kacey to mean she can tour this album and play the good tracks from it while she has plenty to fall back on from her older albums.