Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Star-Crossed’ on Paramount+, A Visual Companion Piece To Kacey Musgraves’ Big New Divorce Record

Part record promotion, part meditation on lyrical themes, and part gloriously stoned fever dream, Star-Crossed (Paramount+) puts a mess of fun, dreamy visuals to the material from Kacey Musgraves’ just-released fourth studio album of the same name. Songwriting vestiges of the singer’s country roots remain. But the very fact that this film exists, as well as its artful look and feel, attests to Musgraves’ pop music assimilation. 

STAR-CROSSED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In 2013, Same Trailer Different Park, Kacey Musgraves’ major label debut, netted the Texas-born singer and songwriter a Best Country Album Grammy on the strength of its plainspoken lyrics, sharp wit, and undeniable Nashville grooves. Pageant Material, her melancholic, more personal 2014 follow-up, was nominated in the same category. And by 2018, Musgraves had emerged with Golden Hour, the album that furthered her steady meander from straight country music to something more like pop, and the one bestowed with Album of the Year honors and certified Platinum status. Everybody was loving Spacey Kacey; in that million lumen spotlight, it’s no wonder her brand-new marriage to country singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly didn’t survive. Now it’s 2021, and where it stops for Musgraves, nobody knows. But the merry go ‘round ain’t slowin’ down, and appropriately she’s released that tried-and-true document of country music tradition, a divorce album, tinged with her stylistic evolution toward lip-gloss pop.

Star-Crossed is an album cycle, its 15 songs cataloging Musgraves’ emotions during her marriage, from first blush, to surging tension, cresting heartbreak, and ultimately personal redemption. Star-Crossed the accompanying film follows that tack, its 48-minute length mirroring the record in three acts. Musgrave came up with the concept, together with director Bardia Zeinali, and cinematographer and frequent Darren Aronofsky collaborator Matthew Libatique provides some often striking visuals. Magical realism is the touchstone here — Musgraves and a set of recurring figures appear in forms of fantastical wedding finery, or in ivory tweed skirt suits from Chanel; they rampage through a mall while looking absolutely fabulous, or strike a pose next to crashed cars and dreamworld hospitals straight out of an Adrian Lyne film. A color palette of pink, powder blue, white satin, and vermillion blends with the California sun, and all the while Musgraves travels through the Star-Crossed songs, occasionally in conventional lip-synch but more often moving in space with the material, appearing as its central figure as the music stops short, slows down, or drifts into an interpretive miasma. This Star-Crossed film takes place in a haze of Musgraves’ own making, and that’s not just her weed smoke talking.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Kanye West has also probed divorce as a creative outlet with his new album Donda. But back in 2010, the polarizing rap artist was riding high with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a record he accompanied and interpreted with the arty, very ‘Ye short film Runaway. And one location used in Star-Crossed might look familiar to film buffs, or fans of weddings gone bad — the dusty, desolate church in Lancaster, Calif. where Quentin Tarantino staged “The Bride”’s wedding massacre in Kill Bill: Volume 1 surfaces here with a neon sign offering annulments for $15.95.

Performance Worth Watching: The first act of Star-Crossed depicts Musgraves and her crew as “anti-matrimonials,” heisters who bust up discount bridal boutiques for kicks and satisfaction, and a standout member of the gang is Symone, the winner of Drag Race season 13. Not to be outdone is comic Megan Statler, playing an arms dealer who hooks up Kacey’s bunch with a clutch of outsized Medieval melee weapons including a morning star and a mace.

Memorable Dialogue: “Woke up from the perfect dream…” “…Bein’ grown up kinda sucks sometimes; really just missin’ my simple times…” “…If I was an angel, everything would be better…” “…Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line”: Star-Crossed the album is full of representative, heart-on-torn sleeve couplets that don’t obfuscate at all where Musgraves is coming from. And those lyrics act as signposts in Star-Crossed the film, stitching its imaginative, colorful, and at times abstract vignettes onto a road map of Musgraves’ heart.

Sex and Skin: Nope.

Our Take: Sure, cigarettes are bad for you. But for decades they lent their flame and dangle to the artiface of cool, so it’s notable that the brazen act of ripping a cig makes a little bit of a comeback in Star-Crossed. Kacey Musgraves has always had a strong sense of lyricism, and a knack for rhythm and pronunciation to lend her words an earworm’s grasp. As she recalls the simple times, or the times made immortal by an iPhone camera roll, Musgraves seeks to rebuild the thing no fractured relationship should ever take away: herself, and by association, her sense of cool.

That sentiment is represented best in Star-Crossed by those little actions — cigarettes and joints lit, or the dreamscape of a finishing school systematically destroyed by an outlier like Kacey. But it’s also suggested with more gravity by the women who hover consistently at the singer’s shoulder — they’re her muses, her sisters in grief, her protectors in trouble, and her partners in crime and dancing. And that last one goes full-fledged kaleidoscopic disco with the redemptive late-album entry “There Is a Light.”

The old-fangled wheels of promotion have become new again. But why rely on a shared, flawed platform when your visual content can own the entire room? Star-Crossed the film is freed from the constraints of MTV but nevertheless an ancestor of the music video, an interpretive, longform version of the format and a representative of the corporate green light granted to the creative whims of a multi-Platinum, Grammy-winning artist. And by appearing on a streamer like Paramount+, it also widens the promotional footprint for an artist still ingratiating herself with a larger pop audience and who’s slated to play a string of 20,000-seat arena dates in 2021. There’s plenty of Kacey Musgraves content here for established fans. But it’s the newcomers who might be more politely surprised by the creativity and artistic heart on display.

Our Call: STREAM IT. This visual accompaniment to Kacey Musgraves’ Star-Crossed album lightens the emotional load of what amounts to a divorce record. If you’re already a space cowboy like Musgraves, it’s definitely for you. If not, strap in. And remember: what doesn’t kill you better run.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges

Watch star-crossed on Paramount Plus