When I first listened to Kacey Musgraves's star-crossed, I felt dyed in the fabric of sadness. The album is based on the love story Musgraves shared with her now ex-husband, Ruston Kelly. (The two singers announced their divorce in 2020.) It chronicles the peaks of new love to marriage to divorce to solo acceptance. Find me this fall, curled up in a corner with a warm whiskey (yep, just straight, warm whiskey), listening to "camera roll" on repeat. But beyond the gorgeous melancholy of star-crossed is hope. It arrives in one truly remarkable, extended moment: the flute solo the dance-adjacent cut "there is a light."
The 14th song on the album, by the time you make it to the track, you've bathed in all the nostalgia and wallowed in all the despair that you should ever have to endure in this god-forsaken world. (Don't worry, you loved it.) Waiting at the end is a tonal shift: a special treat for the sad boys who are ready to dance. The upbeat, disco-infused track is enough on it's own—but "there is a light" also offers something that has, to my knowledge, never been offered in a country song before. Is that? Yes it is. That's a country music flute solo, provided by flautist Jim Hoke.
Now (*cracks knuckles*), I cannot actually confirm that there has never been a flute solo in any country music song ever written because I am not God, and by God, I mean Dolly Parton. I do not know every track in the country music songbook. Please do not reach out to me on Twitter. The instrument is certainly experiencing a boon as of late in hip-hop, but a flute solo still feels like a woefully underused musical utility when it comes to mainstream music. Why are we relegating flautists to jazz music and the opening credits of Survivor? And yes, the pan flute counts as a flute.
But back to my initial question: Pourquoi, I ask! Pourquoi?
The flute solo is a like a jazzy butt-pat. Yes, you can find it in Lizzo's recent work (an accomplished flautist herself), as well as layered in the depths of Dua Lipa's "Physical," but country music remains—until now—a comparatively unexplored frontier. It's an instrumental solo so brazen and atypical that it subverts all expectations. And from the woodwind family, no less! Oboe hive, rise up! Your time could be next.
Musgraves has been a pioneer in the genre since her debut, pushing boundaries both lyrically and sonically, but "there is a light" feels like an entirely new revolution. Not only does it mark a well-deserved breath of fresh air, punctuating an emotional album with unbridled joy, but it also invites the listener to find that happiness along with her. Even in the accompanying album-film, the narrative stops for a moment when this musical moment arrives for Musgraves and her legion of misfits to work it out in a manic, euphoric dance break. It's as cathartic as it is silly. It works, even if it shouldn't.
It's as unexpected and visceral as the rest of the album, which turns Musgraves's past work, especially her drunk-on-love 2018 album, Golden Hour, on its head. But isn't that what happens to you following a break up? Aren't you supposed to be shaken awake by the unknown? By God, if life fucks me up and knocks me down, I hope there's a flute solo waiting in the wings for me, too, because this woodwind fan found it delightful as hell.
