Star-Crossed is very handily her worst album, but I still like a lot about it. That said, I hope we get something more on the level of Golden Hour, which I've gone back to a bunch lately and think might actually be even better than we gave it credit for at the time.
I'm probably one of the dozens that doesn't hope for a return to STDP type stuff, because while star-crossed was uneven, it contains some really cool and interesting attempts at new sounds she hadn't really done before that would benefit from having that past experience
I get why she's lumped into that category but I would not call her a country artist at this point in her career.
I don't think she'll return to country. The problem I had with "Star Crossed" is the lack of specificity and character it had that made her other albums special.
Star Crossed had the most benign and emotionless takes on a divorce, just absolutely surface level stuff, which was really disappointing from someone who had brought us three albums of her own incredibly specific, unique and interesting takes on life
Still haven’t listened to her last one in full, but nonetheless curious about this one. Idk, sometimes I just gotta tap out on an artist I like for a cycle or two and then jump back in, y’know? What I consider the highlights of her career thus far are still very good to me.
It’s debatable, depending on where she goes from here. I feel similarly about Kelsea Ballerini, who was up for best country album this year despite her most recent EP not really being “country” in any super identifiable way. That said, the stuff Kacey won those Grammys for all fits pretty squarely into the country world. “Butterflies” in Best Country Solo Performance I guess could be considered borderline, but she wrote it with country songwriters and it doesn’t really fit any better into, say, the pop vocal categories.