Country star Kacey Musgraves is set to release her highly-anticipated new studio album next month, announcing the details behind star-crossed.
Revealing the track listing and a sample of the ambitious studio project today (August 23), the six-time Grammy winner says she’ll drop an album and film of the same name on September 10.
Marking the follow up to Musgraves’ Grammy, CMA and ACM Album of the Year winner, Golden Hour, star-crossed is said to be inspired largely by the end of Musgraves marriage to fellow singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly — the relationship which also inspired Golden Hour. Fifteen new songs were recorded in Nashville in just three weeks, as Musgraves worked once again with co-producers and writers, Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian. The work was then structured into three distinct acts, much like a theatrical play, and fans can preorder the album here.
In making her announcement, Musgraves has also released the album’s scene-setting title track, which helps introduce her new project as an epic piece of concept art. Co-written by the Texas native with the Tashian and Fitchuk, the effects-laden ballad features a spacey, atmospheric-pop style, with Western-meets-Latin style acoustic guitars and Musgraves’ vocal seeming to float in emotional limbo. The track does not feature a standard verse-chorus pattern — instead feeling like the opening sequence of a movie — but does speak directly to her breakup with Kelly, and the public fallout that came with it.
In interviews, Kacey Musgraves has said she was also partially inspired by a psychedelic drug trip, and star-crossed : the film will bring the album to life visually. Directed by Bardia Zeinali, the film stars Musgraves in a 50-minute production filmed in Los Angeles with a star-studded cast of guests, helping tell the album’s story through the “lens of fashion.” It will stream exclusively via Paramount+ on the same day the album is released (September 10).
star-crossed track listing:
- star-crossed
- good wife
- cherry blossom
- simple times
- if this was a movie..
- justified
- angel
- breadwinner
- camera roll
- easier said
- hookup scene
- keep lookin’ up
- what doesn’t kill me
- there is a light
- gracias a la vida