Kacey Musgraves marked the beginning of her new music era this morning when she announced the release of her next album, star-crossed, and shared its title track. In the new song, Musgraves lyrically sets the scene for a heartbreak album that explores a broken marriage and the two people who tried to save it.

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Musgraves spoke to ELLE earlier this year about her music reflecting her own personal life and divorce from Ruston Kelly last year. She called writing star-crossed “catharsis,” in her May 2021 interview. The song and album reflect “two people who love each other so much, but they cannot make it work in the physical realm to be together, because it’s just not written in the stars for them,” she said. “It almost takes the blame off the two people, which is what I like, because it could be easy in a heartbreak to be like, ‘Well, you fucked up, it’s your fault.’ ‘No, you fucked up, it’s your fault.’ And it’s like, ‘No, let’s just blame the stars. Let’s just say that we’re not meant to be.’”

Of her music having personal ties to her own divorce, Musgraves admitted that “it’s daunting to put your emotions about something really personal on display. I haven’t spoken much about this chapter, and I don’t feel like I owe that to anyone, but I owe it to myself as a creator to flesh out all these emotions that I’ve felt, and I do that through song. It would be strange if I didn’t acknowledge what happened in my life creatively, but it is scary to be like, ‘I’m about to share my most personal thoughts about me, about this other person, about a union that I had with someone.’ I mean, I’m not a ruthless person. I care about other people’s feelings. So it’s kind of scary.”

Here, take in the lyrics to “star-crossed” below and the story Musgraves begins in her album’s first track: