Chasing After Golden Hour: A "star-crossed" Review
How the fruitless search for the love that made "Golden Hour" so special ends in a lack of catharsis... and the discovery of new light.
This review contains references to the following themes: divorce, depression, substance abuse (drugs and alcohol), suicide and suicidal ideation. Reader discretion is advised.
If you were to ask me to name the albums that defined 2018, I would have most likely given you one of two answers: Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves and Dying Star by Ruston Kelly. In a way, the two albums are inseparable. Both were made at the peak of Kacey Musgraves and Ruston Kelly’s marriage, expressing similar similar themes of finding happiness and fulfillment after a period of darkness. They’re quite literally night and day, with Golden Hour being the optimistic, yearning ray of sunshine to Dying Star’s difficult, wandering pale moonlight.
Golden Hour is my go-to comfort album for any occasion, easily becoming one of my favorite albums of all time. Is it as lyrically detailed as her first two albums? No, but it didn’t need to be. What makes Golden Hour such a special record is that it finds an inner peace within itself that’s ethereal and beautiful. It’s not just an album about being in love and the happiest you’ve ever been. It processes a lot of the sadness in between. There’s an underlying paranoia that all of this is temporary, and that soon enough the sun will fully set and your best days are behind you. And yet, it’s enjoying that golden hour in the moment that makes those best moments worth it, no matter what the future holds. It’s a quiet, careful album in one instance, and a confident, optimistic one in the next. It’s no wonder a feel-good album like this ended up as the most beloved country album of the previous decade, especially during a pretty dark year. It’s an album that I still go back to over and over again. I find new things to love about songs I already adored, and every day I fall in love with Kacey’s beautiful, soothing voice as she reminds me that things can and will get better. Some days, I’m comfortable calling it the best country album I’ve ever heard.
Dying Star, meanwhile, is the darker side of that Golden Hour. I remember once sharing my favorite song on the album, “Paratrooper’s Battlecry”, to a friend of mine, and she genuinely expressed concern over my mental health. That amused me at first, but really thinking about it, I guess I was in a pretty dark place when this album came into my life. It’s not an album that hides from our worst moments, especially from the perspective of a self-destructive person with a substance abuse problem. Kacey may have had some dark moments from her past, but Ruston Kelly actively deals with depression and suicidal ideation. Dying Star makes it clear that his trauma stems from the mistakes that he himself has made. His self-loathing is so intense that whenever things seem to be going right for him, he feels like he doesn’t deserve it. And then he makes those worst-case scenarios happen out of some reflexive need to validate his depression and misery. Hence the metaphor of the dying star. But dying stars don’t just destroy what once was there. They start a new life in the process. When you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere else to go but up. That’s what makes Dying Star such a powerful album. In spite of its wallowing and self-sabotage, finding new love and getting another chance to reinvent himself for someone he loves so dearly is a blessing. Even if his depression and self-destruction never left, at least this time he has someone to pull him out of the brink. Which means hopefully, little by little, he and Kacey can find the time to pick up the pieces and bring life to that new star. And the two can live the rest of their lives knowing they found the person who completes them. The rainbow to Kacey’s rainy day after Ruston bursts brightly into the air and starts life anew.
If only it were that simple.
Mid-2020, Kacey Musgraves and Ruston Kelly filed for divorce. Though they claimed there was no bad blood between them, the two agreed things weren’t going to work out and decided to split together. I’m not usually one to fall for public celebrity relationships, but this one hit a personal spot for me. Not just because their love was what fueled the art I loved from them, but now there’s a darker subtext to what I considered to be my comfort albums. Suddenly, the lingering sadness in songs like “Happy And Sad” and “Space Cowboy” are all the more pronounced as that sun finally sets. Suddenly, all these songs about hope and feeling like you found the right person… it really was just high emotions that would eventually come down when all was said and done. Meanwhile, Dying Star fulfilled its own prophecy by having that new life once again die and burst into the air. Likely because Ruston really couldn’t patch up the broken parts of himself, and it had once again ruined another relationship that should have fixed him, or at least kept him running.
Ruston Kelly was in the middle of promoting his next album (recorded before the divorce), Shape and Destroy, while Kacey took a few years off as she mostly hung back and focused on the things that made her happy. Shape and Destroy did get some kudos from a handful of critics (including myself), but with how long it had been since Golden Hour, I was more than curious to see how Kacey would approach her next album. Especially since she was slowly, but surely being adopted by pop music as Nashville continues to pretend she doesn’t exist. Not like she needs them anyway. The pop world will accept her with open arms while country music deals with the fact that their crowning achievements this year are a slur-hurling privileged drunk and a square-faced doofus who sings about his love of D-tier restaurants.
The rollout to star-crossed, Kacey’s newest album released last month, definitely applies more to a pop rollout as opposed to a country rollout. Not only had she followed in the footsteps of Beyoncé and built a concept film around the album, but the album overall is by far her least “country” to date. I’ve grown up enough as a music listener to know this isn’t that big of a deal. As I said, Nashville has treated her like shit, and the pop public has been so much more inviting to Kacey and her aesthetic. I do wish I could hear more of Kacey on traditional country sounds again, but it’s not like her core song structures aren’t still in some ways country. I think what a lot of people don’t understand about genre (musically at least) is that it’s not just instrumental. Songwriting structures, how the song is arranged, where the roots of the artist and their artistic influences reside, all of those contribute to some common form that categorizes an artist’s music. We’re in an age where sticking to one genre doesn’t really happen anymore, so why not find the best marriage of whatever genre you’re inspired by? That’s what made Golden Hour in particular such a mesmerizing album. It was a very country album on its surface, but its flirtations with psychedelic pop and disco gave it a distinct, dreamy sheen that no one has been able to replicate since.
star-crossed’s production has been proven to be a make-or-break moment for a lot of people who aren’t immediately won over by Kacey’s new direction. Golden Hour’s hints of synthpop and psychedelia were new, but also so beautiful and catchy that it kept you coming back just to feel that bliss again. Yet, despite being more of a pop album, star-crossed is considerably less catchy. In fact, its pop elements almost feel neutered. It’s aimless, lost, Kacey has a lot of vocal effects on her voice that make her sound synthetic and less expressive. There are moments that elevate beyond its emotionally stunted melancholy, but for the most part, the album just sinks into this dull sadness that never reaches a moment of catharsis…
You know, writing that word just now made me realize why I’ve taken so long to fully recollect my feelings on this album. I figured I’d get something done on the week it came out, but I kind of struggled to really explore what makes this album work. I knew I loved it, but I wasn’t sure how much of it was reliant on blind fan devotion. Having followed not just Kacey’s story, but her ex-husband’s story and how the two were meant to complete each other. Because yeah, I’ll admit it, star-crossed is probably Kacey’s weakest album. The high points of this album were never going to reach the high points of Golden Hour, but I don’t think they reach the high points of Same Trailer, Different Park or Pageant Material either. Hell, unlike in 2018, her competition this year is a lot harder, and she may not even end up in the Top 5. But I still love this album, a lot. It was just hard to really explain why without just telling you the album’s arc.
But writing this final draft made me realize what the album was missing. It all comes back to that word; catharsis. There’s not a single moment on this album that relieves Kacey’s emotions, nor is there really a climax. It stays in mostly one mode throughout the entire runtime. A lingering sadness that’s stuck between holding it in and wanting to cry. Except you never even get to cry. You’re just sad.
A few weeks after star-crossed released, another woman in mainstream country music released an album about a divorce; Carly Pearce’s 29: Written In Stone. This was originally an EP simply titled 29 where Carly Pearce made songs about life after her divorce from certified douchebag Michael Ray. The Written In Stone part of the full album was essentially an extension of the themes of 29, and the album is far more expressive and clear about its path to moving on than star-crossed was. But the thing is, the two albums have a very similar personal arc. Both Kacey and Carly fell deeply in love with their exes, believing they were the answer to their eternal happiness and life going as planned. When they went through the divorce, the feelings ended up being very complicated. They both resented their former lovers for how they treated them and watching with disdain as they see them repeat the same mistakes with their new partners, but they also hold a lot of residual love from them. To the point where a childish instinct wants to run back into their arms just so they can feel love again. Not only that, but both of them even have insecurities about their age as divorced adult women. 29 directly references Carly Pearce’s age and how she worries that she wasted her youth on someone who didn’t deserve her, thus realizing that she doesn’t have her life sorted out by the time she was expected to by friends and family. Kacey, meanwhile, now finds it hard to adapt to the current dating scene as hookups do very little for her, and she just wants to reexperience the domestic love she had with Ruston again.
So why does 29: Written In Stone feel like a more immediate album? Not better, immediate. If both albums have very similar themes, why does star-crossed feel like an entirely different album, even thematically? Well, if we take the idea of catharsis into consideration, that answer becomes obvious. Carly may not have all the answers for her future, but she knows how she feels. She knows that she’s genuinely angry at Michael Ray for his infidelity and treating her like a sex object rather than a person. The reason why songs like “Diamondback”, “Easy Going” and “Next Girl” are so immediately catchy is that there’s a catharsis in letting out that anger Carly felt over Michael Ray leaving her. And the production has the furious barn stomp to drive that satisfaction even further. But even her sad songs have a catharsis to them. Because even if she is still angry, Carly still yearns for the love she thought she had and will even sympathize with the girls who were similarly fooled by Michael Ray’s supposed charm. “Never Wanted To Be That Girl” in particular is an excellent example of that. It’s catharsis in the form of sadness. Letting out the inner pain that Michael Ray caused her and expressing concern over where life would be going now that she’s reaching thirty and back to where she was as a teenager.
But notice how much of Carly Pearce’s catharsis is directed at Michael Ray. At least from her perspective, Michael Ray is a jerk who manipulated her for easy sex, got bored, and then left Carly for another starry-eyed innocent infatuated with his good looks and charm. She has reason to be mad at him while mourning the loss of her naiveté. star-crossed doesn’t have a real moment of catharsis because its target is aimed toward Ruston Kelly. I may have more context for Ruston Kelly than I do for Michael Ray, but even if I didn’t, Kacey makes it clear that the breakup is not entirely his fault. Mostly cuz she doesn’t really make anything about what ultimately broke them apart clear. There are hints of frustration in the first half of the album, but they’re always hesitant to put the blame solely on him. “good wife” shows that their relationship began to form cracks when Ruston started to spark bouts of anger to a point that scared Kacey. So she amended her behavior and approach him more carefully, trying to be a kind, loving wife who never provoked him and kept that illusion of love she felt for him. You can tell that the problem lies within Ruston’s anger issues, but it’s also pretty obvious that Kacey was trying to avoid the problem rather than actually dealing with it. Falling back into conservative stereotypes of what’s expected out of wives to lie to herself that there isn’t a problem and she’s just doing the best she can. “justified” gets close to the catharsis Kacey is looking for by exploring the back and forth emotions she feels towards Ruston and how he treated her, but in the bridge, she still admits fault within the relationship. She’s clearly frustrated and wants to tell him off, but there’s still the instinct to pull back because, well, it really wasn’t all his fault. Her fear to really confront the problem and instead retreat to a comfort zone was letting the problem fester within them for too long. You can even see this instinct in “simple times”, which seems like a throwaway pop single at first, but the more you dig into it, the more you realize how much of it is just yearning for the happiness she felt on Golden Hour. She got too comfortable, and now she has to face the emotions she didn’t want to ever face again.
If there’s one song in the first half that comes the closest to finding some sort of catharsis, it’s “breadwinner”. I’ll be honest, I thought this was one of the weakest songs on the album at first. But the more I came back to it, the more I realized how essential this was as the album centerpiece. I guess I can’t be too surprised this is the one song that seems to have become the sleeper hit of the album. Even we speak, it’s the only song on star-crossed that’s hovered in the lower end of Spotify’s Top 200 since release. It’s the one song on the album that actually expresses full anger toward Ruston Kelly. She exposes Ruston’s hypocrisy over leaning on her success to fund and promote his own work, yet feeling cold and jealous when that fame isn’t reciprocated. She calls upon the image of a breadwinner, showing Ruston as someone who likes women who do all the work and provide for him, but doesn’t want to be outshone by them. And unlike “good wife”, she doesn’t excuse him by acknowledging her own blame in their arguments over this topic. In fact, she outright tells him that just because he’s been hurt and traumatized in the past, it doesn’t mean she’s responsible for his mental health all the time. Sometimes, you gotta do the work yourself. And that is such a revealing moment on the album. Even if you don’t have context for Ruston Kelly’s music, you still understand why this line is so tricky for Kacey to walk on. Dating someone with mental health issues isn’t easy. As much as you want to help them and support them, you also don’t want their issues to be a burden on your own mental health. You have to find the right balance of being there for them while also knowing when you’re becoming a crutch. And for Kacey to acknowledge that shows that she finally took a stance against him and drew a line in the sand. It’s too late now, but it’s still the one moment of catharsis that the album has been looking for throughout the first half.
So why does it not feel like enough?
I mentioned earlier that this was one of my least favorite songs on the album at first. That’s because at the time I felt like the production choice was odd. For being the one song on the album you can describe as angry or fed-up, it’s so milquetoast in its presentation. Kacey sings in a whispy voice over a wavy synth and skippy drum groove. She never raises her voice or emotes that frustration from how Ruston treated her. It just kind of meanders along. It’s catchy, yeah, but it’s a little too pleasant for what’s supposed to be the last straw. So on paper, “breadwinner” seems like an excellent moment of catharsis, and the album’s definitive climax before descending into its saddest, loneliest point. But in execution, it’s underwhelming on purpose. You don’t get the catharsis you think that you want like what you got from Carly Pearce, or when Billie Eilish built her whole album towards the explosive pop-rock finale on “Happier Than Ever”. You just find a brief moment of clarity, and then sink back into that distant, frozen loneliness.
Again, I think it all ties back to the fact that this is addressed to Ruston Kelly. It’d be easier if it was an asshole like Michael Ray, G-Eazy or Joshua Bassett, but the fact that it’s someone who Kacey not only still admires, but even tries to be friends with after the fact is what makes this album’s emotions so confused. You don’t need the context of Ruston Kelly’s music to appreciate the themes of this album, but I do think it makes it stronger as a result. You get a sense of the kind of person Ruston Kelly is, and that person is kind of a wreck. He suffers deeply from depression and self-doubt, and he tends to distract himself from the pain through alcoholism and drug abuse. The strongest parts of Dying Star are him reaching that rock bottom and being numb to the pain as life becomes monotonous and dismal. Even when he does meet Kacey and his life gets undeniably better, he still finds that self-destructive impulse to act up and sabotage what he has. I haven’t addressed his most recent album yet, Shape And Destroy, but that’s mostly because the album’s place in Kacey and Ruston’s timeline is odd. This was recorded and finished before the divorce but ended up being released after said divorce. It’s overall a much more optimistic album than Dying Star. One that finds a reason to live and reaches a hand out to his audience to pull themselves out of the haze of depression, even if only for a moment. But still, the album lingers in that haze for the same amount of time it stays out of it. I called it an album about recovery on my best albums list last year, and while that still holds true, recovery isn’t without its rough patches. You gotta power through the inevitable hardships to reach that point of true fulfillment. The opening song, “In The Blue”, really caught me off guard the first time I heard it. Mostly because of this verse which reveals more than it probably should, especially being released so close to the divorce;
“But I've got a woman, her hands are gold
Carries the sun to me when I'm cold
And afraid of my gunfire brain
Forgive what I say, I never mean it anyway”
This parallels exactly what Kacey was hinting at on “good wife” and “angel”. Ruston lashes out against Kacey whenever his anger issues and depression get the better of him. Since he’s working on being sober, he doesn’t have the substances to quiet himself down or deter anyone from getting near him. There’s a similar sentiment on “Mid-Morning Lament” where Ruston contemplates spiking his coffee after a rough day and actually goes through with it. Especially after a fight with Kacey leaves her crying in the hallway.
But it’s hard to outright dislike Ruston for any of this. Depression is a bitch. He knows that he doesn’t mean any of his outbursts, or wants to wallow in misery on his worst days. But it’s difficult to really parse through that alone, even when life is actually going pretty well for you. That’s why sometimes people with depression rely on others as a means of support whenever they do fall into these spirals. But you can’t just dump all of your trauma on one person if they feel unequipped for it. Or if they do, you shouldn’t overwhelm them with all your sadness and expect them fix everything alone. You have to put in the same effort as they are. No one can rebuild their self-confidence except yourself. Otherwise, you risk your relationship becoming codependent. Which is exactly what happened, and why Kacey had no choice but to leave him behind. She did what she could. But it was never gonna be enough.
That’s why the run of songs between “camera roll” and “hookup scene” is the most devastating part of the album. Now Kacey has moved on to better things, finally cementing the end of her marriage with Ruston Kelly, but she never got any real catharsis from it. She acknowledges that it happened, she tells him off on his worst behavior, and yet she can’t bring herself to actually move on from him. She’ll scroll through her phone and find the good memories they had together, all of those photographs hiding the hurt that lies beneath them. But she still yearns for that simple happiness to come back. The further back she goes, the more she starts to feel the weight of her loneliness. “easier said” straightforwardly admits that moving on is easier said than done. Hell, not just moving on. Loving someone in general. Kacey wrestles with the fact that she does still love Ruston Kelly and wants the best for him, even if that means she can’t be a part of it. But it’s so much easier to just say that when you’ve seen and felt the worst of him.
That streak ends with what is undoubtedly the best song on the album, “hookup scene”. Quite possibly rock bottom for Kacey as she finds herself in the midst of hooking up with strangers, searching for that warmth of love she’d been missing since the divorce. As much as she respects this way of meeting new people, she knows it’s not for her. Now that she’s experienced what true love is, this kind of quick-fix, trial and error method of finding love is miserable for her. But it’s not like she has much of a choice. Especially as a gorgeous woman in her mid-30s where people will sooner go after her for base sex appeal rather than any genuine connection. What hurts the most about this song is her plea to the listener to hold on to whatever love they have, because they won’t realize how good they have it until it’s gone. Which, on the surface, sounds very immature. Obviously, you have to be strong for you and your partner when you hit a rough patch, but if there’s any proof that sometimes partners are a lost cause or not worth the effort, it’s this album. If Kacey stayed with Ruston, she would have been just as unhappy as she is in a stranger’s arms. That’s what makes this song and that sentiment so heartbreaking. It’s a lie. Kacey wants to convince herself that she’d be happier in a loving relationship, but she’s chasing something that’s proven to no longer be there. The golden hour has faded to black. You can’t return to it anymore. It’s one last desperate plea to relive the happiness she thought she needed, but that happiness is gone. To reach for it is to reach for nothing. She wasn’t ready to accept that, at least not yet.
This is what the lack of catharsis was building up to. The reason Kacey never found peace with Ruston was that it was never really about him. Obviously, she loves him and wishes things were better between them, but she knows how she feels about him at this point. She’s sorry that she couldn’t help him through his mental turmoil, but it’s also on him for being co-dependent and excusing his shitty behavior on his mental illness. It’s not until the last few songs on the album where it becomes more obvious what Kacey has been missing this whole time; she misses Golden Hour.
Specifically the feeling that Golden Hour gave her in her happiest moments. She made it during a time where everything made sense to her. Where she can express her love of not just her husband, but the world at large and everything beautiful about it. Again, Golden Hour was about more than just her marriage. It’s her appreciation of nature, it’s capturing a peaceful bliss that made her feel like everything was gonna be okay. “Slow Burn” in particular is the perfect example of this, taking things slow and simply watching the beauty around her as the world spins round and round. I think that’s what she’s missing on star-crossed. Why songs like “cherry blossom” and “easier said” have the same spirit of Golden Hour, but it feels more dettached and distant. Why “simple times” and “good wife” have her yearning for when life was easier and she didn’t have to worry about her marriage falling apart, just living in that happiness she felt in its best moments. Why she keeps scrolling through her phone on “camera roll” or reconsidering her divorce on “hookup scene”. And ultimately, it’s why she doesn’t feel comfortable villainizing Ruston Kelly, thus giving her no reason to need catharsis out of separating from him. What she needed all along was the light that made her happy.
If there is one thing she learned from Ruston, even after everything they’ve been through, it’s that the death of one light merely means the birth of another. Just because that golden hour has finally set, doesn’t mean you can’t find happiness elsewhere. That’s why after two songs of rebuilding her self-confidence, “there is a light” is such a freeing, incredible moment on the album. Because from here, she finally finds the love and happiness she’s been looking for. It’s not from a relationship, or this idea of a “perfect” life. It was the love she has for herself. The hand to pull her out from the darkness was her own. She doesn’t have to share that love with others if she doesn’t want to. All that matters is that from now on, she’s going to be there for herself. It’s the brightest, most optimistic song on the album. Galloping with a confident groove, a fluttering Spanish guitar, and an incredible flute solo that sweeps me off my feet every time it comes on. After an album that seemed stuck in one, uncertain emotion throughout its entire runtime, it felt great to finally hear a song that genuinely sounded happy to be alive. It’s the true moment of catharsis that Kacey was looking for.
star-crossed is not Golden Hour, and it was never going to be. Which is a lesson that Kacey had to learn before even we did. Because to us, Golden Hour represents an incredible yeehaw album with songs to cry and fall in love to. To Kacey, Golden Hour was the happiest moment of her life that she now realizes she can’t bring back. Especially when a lot of it turned out for the worse in the end. But that’s not to say we have to move on from Golden Hour to be truly happy with ourselves. If anything, Kacey is all the better for having this album in her life. It’s given her immense success and acclaim, and it’s taught her a lot of tough, but valuable lessons about what it means to be truly happy. And even if her relationship with Ruston Kelly is forever strained, she learned a lot out of his best self and his worst self. While Ruston is impulsive and self-destructive presuming the worst at every turn, Kacey has learned that she has to help herself as much as others help her, thus evolving as a person even when Ruston couldn’t. But at the same time, Ruston also taught her not to take life so leisurely. As much as she loves the happy moments, she has to be there for the rough patches too. Just because she couldn’t do it with Ruston, doesn’t mean she won’t know how to handle it with future partners who can provide the same good things Ruston used to. As for when she’ll find those future partners? Who knows? Right now she has to focus on herself. She’ll find someone when she finds them. Hopefully it’s me. Nah, I’m kidding. Unless I’m not?
I’m morbidly curious to see how Ruston Kelly eventually responds to this album. Whether that’s in his own music or in some interview that goes viral and decides where the discourse will go. I’m sure it won’t be too hostile since the two are presumably still friends. Either way, I hope the two are leading healthier lives and are exploring their new light. Wherever they found it.