A Star-Crossed Kacey Musgraves Came to Mend Broken Hearts in Dallas

Kacey Musgraves wasted little time stating the obvious. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” said the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter early in her 90-minute set Monday night. “I find it ironic you all chose to spend Valentine’s Day with someone who just released one of the most fucking depressing albums of all time. It should’ve come with a trigger warning.”

Her observation about her most recent LP, last year’s star-crossed, elicited one of the many enthusiastic roars the sold-out American Airlines Center crowd – bedecked and bedazzled in an eye-popping array of Musgraves cosplay lewks – emitted over the course of Monday’s performance. The show marked the girl from Golden’s biggest hometown-adjacent headlining gig to date, and her first stop through town in almost three years.

What could have been a grim evening, full of mid-tempo odes to a broken heart and a soul-battering search for love and redemption, often felt like anything but – after all, what good is a long dark night of the soul without a revivifying sunrise the next morning?

Musgraves, clad in a jumpsuit that looked like liquid ink under the bright lights, even acknowledged as much after calling out the elephant in the room: “We’re gonna have a fun time, even though the album’s depressing … if you have a broken heart, we’re gonna put that shit back together.”

Indeed, it would have been difficult to leave downtown Dallas with anything other than a tear-dampened smile on your face Monday. Musgraves’ latest stop on her brief “star-crossed: unveiled” tour – the month-long, 15-date jaunt wraps up Feb. 25 in Toronto – pulls out just about every trick that exists in modern, arena-pop spectacles.

Throughout the night, the 33-year-old Musgraves used every inch of her dramatic arena canvas – bruised romance rarely looked so stylish. Confetti blanketed the room a few times, first during the gorgeous “cherry blossom,” and again as “there is a light” climaxed, the second time augmented by ricocheting, multi-colored lasers.

As Musgraves emerged from a blinding white light between the enormous scarlet curtains to begin the show, singing “star-crossed,” a literal flaming heart materialized behind her. She stood upon a heart-shaped LED screen at the foot of the expansive stage, outfitted with a grand proscenium, her seven band members surrounding her. A disco ball near the back of the arena floor striated the room with light during a hypnotic “Space Cowboy.”

Such visual excess helped underscore the profoundly emotional material being presented. (Not for nothing did Musgraves call for tequila shots after completing the devastating “camera roll.”) Musgraves worked through most of star-crossed, an album whose songs provided a tart contrast with the hazy, infatuated interiority of 2018’s Golden Hour.

The dichotomy of those records, which made up the bulk of Monday’s setlist, served as counterweight to the other intense sensation coursing through the performance: hometown pride. As is custom during Musgraves’ local appearances, this tour stop functions as a homecoming, albeit one taking place 80 miles from where she grew up.

Her family, as they have been over the decade-plus she’s been playing big rooms in Dallas-Fort Worth, were again in attendance Monday, which provided some of the funniest banter Musgraves offered up all night: “Nana is not very happy with the amount of cuss words in my shows,” she explained to the audience at one point. “I told her, ‘Nana, you’re gonna have to fuckin’ get over that.'”

Her sister, Kelly, also got a sweet shout-out during “Lonely Weekend,” and Musgraves’ own emotions about how far she’s come were palpable as she prepared to play one of her first big hits.

“Ten years ago … this song was coming out,” Musgraves said, as she introduced “Merry Go ‘Round.” “I’m from a really tiny town about 80 miles east of here. I wrote this song, and I was really being inspired by where I was from. I turned it into the label, and said this is what I want my first single to be, and they said, ‘No, try again.’ I said, ‘We’re gonna release it anyway.’ … I wanna hear you sing this with me.”

Standing alone on that enormous stage, bathed in a single spotlight, Musgraves strummed her acoustic guitar and sang “Merry Go ‘Round,” accompanied by the sound of 20,000 fulsome voices, their hearts full and eyes brimming, as one of their own, who shook off the dust of her small town and reached for something more, stepped back from the microphone, and let the sound of all that affection and affirmation fill the room to the rafters.