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Letmeset the scene: one singer andrecent divorcee, inspired by what else but Greek tragedy.
Immediately upon the albums arrival,that inspirationwas clear.
Chiu has found classical themes across the pop-culture universe from obvious places like DisneysHerculesto less obvious ones likeBreaking Bad.
If you do classics, you see it everywhere, she explained.
The fundamentals of storytelling are really transcendent.
We spoke about the Greek and Shakespearean ideas onstar-crossedand what Aristotle would make of the whole thing.
Kacey has talked about processing her divorce and thinking of it as having been through a Greek tragedy.
Kacey says she wanted to group her songs into three acts with five songs a pop.
And then later, Horace said, [uses a similarly declarative voice] It should have five acts.
Do the three fit into the five?
Are we splitting hairs?
Its literally art imitates life.
In a way, its an imitation of [it], an artistic version.
And beginning, middle, and end pretty much map onto three acts.
How did you experience these three acts?I thought star-crossed was really good.
In a way, I thought it was too obvious where were going.
Were hitting the Greek-myth thing, and were hitting the Shakespeare thing right from the get-go.
So it overdetermines what comes later in terms of what you expect.
In the middle, I thought some of the songs started to bleed together a little bit.
And some of its really good I like justified a lot.
Greek tragedy is nothing if not violently passionate.
We didnt get a lot of superstrong emotions.
Like, things are happeningtoher.Right.
But were talking about art, right?
A whole bunch of people end up dead!
Yeah, I thought the middle was probably the weakest part of the album.
[But getting to] the resolution, I thought it kind of recovered itself at the end.
And Shakespeare usually does the five acts, as opposed to the three.
In terms of emotional development and denouement and all that stuff, its definitely there.
Maybe its just the way the music is.
Like a bold, Loretta Lynntype figure.
I dont know what your background in country music is, but Oh, Im from Houston!
I worship George Strait!
Okay, yeah.I mean, its also not in that same genre.
Its hard to classify Kacey, cause shes country but not, depending on the song.
Thats part of her attraction, right?
She gavean interviewin which she talked about the title and her understanding of this Shakespearean idea of being star-crossed.
If youll forgive my cursing, she said it was to be fucked by love or luck.
That [Chuckles.]
It seems like she has a grasp on that idea?Well!
I mean, Oedipus would agree with you.
Was it, now?
Yeah, just wanted to put that out there.Hey, whatever works, I guess.
I mean, the Greeks talked about the Muses being goddesses of artistic inspiration.
If your muse is a mushroom, well, who am I to judge?
You go on this emotional journey.
I am not entirely sure it landed every time on every one of the 15.
Some of them did, some of them almost did, and a couple of them were …
I kind of dont like camera roll.
Me neither.Theres something about camera roll that just rubbed me the wrong way.
There was just something about camera roll that felt out of place somehow.
It did better than the middle.
Greek tragedy is many things, but subdued is not one of them.
They would have been out there in these elaborate costumes and masks.
Butsubduedis not in their vocabulary.
And in some ways, it seemed like the album was pretty subdued for a lot of it.
Its like easy-listening divorce.
Did you have a favorite song on the album?I did like cherry blossom a lot.
I thought that was clever!
I thought that was kind of poignant.
And maybe thats what were after in the album.
I think it was successful in several ways and not in other ways.
That in itself, a unified artistic vision.
Aristotle wouldve recognized that; it should be a unified whole, he said.
In that sense, the effort itself justifies what shes done.
Fear, pity, catharsis catharsis hit the best.
I think the fear and pity got a little bit muddled, though it started really well with star-crossed.
I really appreciated this conversation; this was extremely fun.
It still is part of how we present narrative and emotions and how we process things and tell stories.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
