Entertainment
Kacey Musgraves Revealed 'Star-Crossed' Release Date & Movie Trailer
Get ready for sad girl fall!
The details to Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2018 record Golden Hour, are finally here. The country-pop star’s fourth studio album will be released this September, and will arrive with a companion short film on Paramount+, also called Star-Crossed.
The record will be Musgraves’ first new music since the release of her Grammy winning album Golden Hour, which took home four awards during the 2019 award show including the coveted Album of the Year. And like that game-changing record which was based off the whirlwind and budding romance between her and her ex-husband Ruston Kelly, Star-Crossed will mine the tragedy of their divorce, which the two publicly announced in 2020.
Below is everything we know so far about Star-Crossed, including its film counterpart, full track list, Greek tragedy origins, and more.
Star-Crossed Release Date + Short Film
Star-Crossed will be released on September 10, 2021 via Interscope Records / UMG Nashville.
Alongside the 15-track album, Musgraves will also release a companion short film exclusively on Paramount+ the same day. Titled star-crossed: the film, the Bardia Zeinali-directed film will star Musgraves, and take “the music from the studio to the screen with gorgeous visuals and a sense of heightened reality.”
The 50-minute movie was shot over 10 days in Los Angeles and will include cameo appearances from actor Eugene Levy, Victoria Pedretti, singer Princess Nokia, RuPaul Drag Race’s Symone, and comedian Megan Stalter.
Watch the trailer, which includes haunting shots of Musgraves in a wedding gown and participating in debutante lessons, below.
Lead single “Star-Crossed” is out now
“Star-Crossed,” the lead single and the album’s opening track, is the fated prologue for the record that Musgraves has described as a “modern day Greek tragedy” told in three-parts.
Encompassing the mysticism and grandness of that descriptor, the record’s titular song gets right to the point of what we can expect from the rest of the album: “Let me set the scene/ Two lovers ripped right apart at the seams/ Woke up from the perfect dream/ And then the darkness came,” Musgraves sings wistfully. It’s all set to lush harmonizing from Musgraves, and cinematic, big-sounding production from Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, both of whom worked with Musgraves on Golden Hour.
Star-Crossed Track list
- 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
Star-Crossed is inspired by Greek tragedies
In interviews, Musgraves has described Star-Crossed as a modern day Greek tragedy structured in three parts, and is about her divorce with fellow country singer Ruston Kelly. The two were married in October 2017 and announced their divorce in 2020.
“This last chapter of my life and this whole last year and chapter for our country — at its most simple form, it’s a tragedy,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview. “And then I started looking into why portraying a tragedy is actually therapeutic and why it is a form of art that has lasted for centuries. It’s because you set the scene, the audience rises to the climax of the problem with you, and then there’s resolve. There’s a feeling of resolution at the end. I was inspired by that.”
In an interview with Apple Music, Musgraves elaborated on what to expect sonically from the album, which she explained will lean more country than Golden Hour.
"It's got this theatrical kind of almost fantasy take on- I wanted there to be that, just kind of that classical story,” she said. “I always love when something classic or something traditional, something futuristic kind of meet[...] I think that there are certain aspects of this record that sound a little bit more country, I guess than Golden Hour [...] But at the same time, I feel like I'm tapping into more influences on this, widespread influences on this album."
