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.

Star-Crossed received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who regarded it the "divorce album" of Musgraves' discography, in contrast to the celebration of marriage in Golden Hour.

[7] In May, during a cover story for Elle magazine, Musgraves revealed that the album sees her tackling her divorce from country singer Ruston Kelly after two and a half years of marriage.

[11] In August 2021, during a cover story for Crack Magazine, it was revealed that the project would be released before the end of the year, feature jazz flute and a kato, and have "more of a foot in country than Golden Hour".

[12] During an appearance on Dr. Maya Shankar's podcast A Slight Change of Plans, Musgraves sang snippets of two of the songs from the album, "Camera Roll" and "Angel".

[16] In the Rolling Stone interview, the singer explained that as she was conceptualizing the album earlier this year, she kept coming back to Greek tragedies, and their three-act structure.

[19] Slate critic Carl Wilson said the album expands on the "mellow psychedelic-country-synth sound" Musgraves discovered on Golden Hour with co-producers Ian Fitchuk and Daniel Tashian.

"[29] The album's subject matter discusses themes of marriage, divorce, and post-breakup emotional healing,[30][31] whereas its track-list is divided into three sections, which Musgraves dubbed as "three acts".

[32] Musgraves described the title track as "a pared back, Latin-inflected ballad about resigning from a relationship and accepting fate without bitterness", noting that it "swells into a pattern of guttural electric guitar, spectral strings and a chorus of voices".

[39] The film was shot over 10 days in Los Angeles and features cameo appearances by actors Eugene Levy, Victoria Pedretti, and Diane Venora, RuPaul's Drag Race winner Symone, rapper Princess Nokia, and comedian Meg Stalter.

[46] Lauren Dehollogne, reviewing for The Line of Best Fit, lauded Star-Crossed as Musgraves' "most raw and honest album to-date" and hailed her as one of the best songwriters of her generation.

[49] Entertainment Weekly critic Leah Greenblatt stated Star-Crossed comprises themes covering both "the essence of country music (love hurts, life is hard) and an extremely 2021 refraction of it.

Winograd stated even some of the album's less stripped-down tracks are arranged in a very simple fashion, emphasizing Musgraves' stylistic vision and eschewing formulaic pop.

[52] DIY's Ben Tipple observed, much like its predecessor, Star-Crossed "takes the storytelling of her country roots and presents it with pop grandeur", but this time with a darker tone.

[24] Writing for Exclaim!, Dylan Barnabe highlighted that the album is an emotionally vulnerable, "ballad-heavy" record, divided into sections explaining the "exposition, climax, downfall, and resolution of Musgraves' love story".

[27] David Smyth of Evening Standard recognized adulthood's aspirations and its harsh realities as the album's overarching motifs, and its sound "a less dramatic progression than that between Golden Hour and its more traditional predecessors.

Pitchfork critic Sam Sodomsky found Musgraves "burrowing inward" in Star-Crossed, singing stark, simplistic lyrics, but amplifying her "obsessive self-reflection" for mainstream appeal.

[55] In his AllMusic review, senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote Star-Crossed offers "a full-blown song cycle" detailing the breakdown of Musgraves' marriage.

[19] The Guardian's Laura Snapes appreciated the album's acoustic, ambiguous songwriting, and "cosmic, retro-futurist" production, which she identified as stemming from Golden Hour.

"[48] Reviewing for Rolling Stone, Jonathan Bernstein dubbed it a "consistently compelling, admirably idiosyncratic yet mildly disappointing" album, whose best moments were when Musgraves "put her own personalized spin on the well-worn cliches of the standard big-budget post-break-up purge-fest.

"[72] She also posted a collection of photos on her Instagram story, highlighting her ties to country music, such as pictures with Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Shania Twain, and George Strait.

Aswad and Willman opined that Musgraves marketed Star-Crossed as a pop record, citing how it was jointly released with Interscope Records, which is primarily a pop label home to Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and many hip-hop artists, and none of the album's tracks were serviced to country radio stations, thus making it "hard to imagine that those moves went unnoticed by the [country] screening committee.