star-crossed

Star-Crossed (stylized in all lowercase) is the fifth studio album by American singer Kacey Musgraves. It was released on September 10, 2021, by MCA Nashville and Interscope Records. Musgraves co-wrote and co-produced the album with American musicians Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian, with whom she also collaborated on her fourth studio album, Golden Hour (2018).

The album's subject matter was inspired by Musgraves' personal journey of heartache and healing following her divorce from American singer-songwriter Ruston Kelly. She described Star-Crossed as chronicling a "modern tragedy", taking influences from Romeo and Juliet, the famous play by English playwright William Shakespeare, and cited Bill Withers, Daft Punk, Sade, Eagles, and Weezer as her musical references for the album. In contrast to her earlier albums, Star-Crossed is primarily a pop record, infusing elements of folk, dance, rock, and psychedelic music while retaining some of the country poise of its predecessor. It consists of mellow ballads, propelled by steady tempos, analog synthesizers, looped drums, and layered harmonies.

The album was preceded by the promotional single "Star-Crossed" on August 23, 2021, followed by "Justified" as the lead single a few days later. "Camera Roll" was released to adult alternative radio as the album's second single on January 24, 2022. A companion film titled after the album and featuring its music, directed by Bardia Zeinali, was exclusively released to Paramount+ alongside the album's release.

Star-Crossed received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who regarded it as the "divorce album" of Musgraves' discography, in contrast to the celebration of marriage on Golden Hour. Most of the reviews complimented its genre-blending production and Musgraves' intimate storytelling, while the rest viewed Musgraves' pivot towards pop as uninspired and felt it was an inferior work to Golden Hour. Star-Crossed placed on many year-end lists of the best albums of 2021. Commercially, the album arrived inside the top 10 in Australia, Canada, Scotland, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and topped the country genre charts in Australia, the UK and the US. One of the album's tracks, "Camera Roll", was nominated for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.