Stars Was Enough

*Finding A Song That Saved Me: A Personal Exploration of Michaela Anne’s “Stars” (2016)*

by Kroes den Bock

It’s the shapeless hours that get to you, the afternoons when window light blurs plans and the silence in your home seems to judge you for the things left undone. That’s when certain songs find their tender mark. For me, there is one such song, adrift in the swelling tide of country releases from the last decade, that has never gotten its due—Michaela Anne’s “Stars,” from her criminally overlooked 2016 album *Bright Lights and the Fame*. It’s not the song you’ll hear at a bar or see covered by rising singer-songwriters on TikTok. I hardly see it mentioned in passing, even among Americana enthusiasts, let alone the mainstream. It’s as if it slipped through the cracks, waiting only for those of us willing to listen a little closer, a little more desperately.

“Stars” is a country song, undeniably—steel guitar that weeps like a faraway train, a soft percussive shuffle, and a melody that roots itself in the heart. But Michaela Anne—blessed with a plaintive, careful voice—delivers something so intimate it bypassed radio play entirely. It’s a song that might have been lost, had I not stumbled on it late one autumn night, whiskey-stained and weary, in my apartment, hopelessly searching for reasons to not close myself further to the world.

She opens:

*“We sat on the hood of your best friend’s car,
Talking ’bout dreams, just counting the stars.
You wanted to fly, I wanted to run.”*

This isn’t a verse; it’s a truth, familiar to anyone who measures time not in years, but in the distance between longing and possibility. While so many songs in country music talk of big risk or simple nostalgia, Michaela Anne’s “Stars” is less interested in the scale of dreams and more in their quiet possibility. She sings in the language of small hopes, the sort you keep secret from the world—and from yourself—lest they shatter in daylight.

*“We both closed our eyes, and made silent wishes,
Mine for the strength, yours for forgiveness.”*

I have lived most of my teens and my adult years peering at dreams as though through ribs—the soft glow always there, never entirely accessible. There’s something about quietly wishing for strength that rings true for me, having wrestled with chronic depression since early adulthood. Michaela’s song is a gentle rebuke to the world’s insistence on grand gestures. I, for one, have no spectacular pathology; no car crash, no intervention, no rock bottom worthy of the movies. My life was (and sometimes still is) punctuated by gray days—just dull ache and inertia, the slow worry that everyone else is moving on without you.

In those days, I wanted to run, but couldn’t move—I wanted the strength to say yes to simple invitations, to trust any kind of future was worth the risk. When Michaela Anne sings of making a wish for just that—strength—I don’t feel seen; I feel exposed. Songs like “Stars” make me uneasy in their accuracy, and grateful for it.

The chorus drifts by like wind through wheat:

*“Stars shining above you and me,
Reminding us of where we’re supposed to be.
Maybe it’s far, maybe it’s near,
But it’s all right, darling, as long as you’re here.”*

Forgive me my sentimentality, but I have obsessed over these lines in more wretched moments than I care to admit. There is something in the way Anne delivers “maybe it’s far, maybe it’s near”—her voice neither cracks nor pretends assurance. There is hesitation, acceptance, even peacefulness in not knowing. For all the therapy and reading I’ve subjected myself to, acceptance is the thing still out of reach.

The world, and especially the world of country music, loves stories of resolution—breakups avenged, dreams chased, wrongs put right. “Stars” stands apart. Michaela Anne sings of uncertainty sans apology. She hands you not catharsis, but companionship: “As long as you’re here.” I have spent months alone fighting the compulsion to isolate, and in that fight, this line has been a balm, a way out of shame.

Michaela Anne’s brilliance is the way she lets her vulnerability be unremarkable. This is not a song about big heartbreak but about the silent drifts that shape and scar us. It’s about the daily labor of hope, the quiet companionship of another person who simply stays. My longest relationships, both romantic and platonic, have been measured by the presence through low moments, not through blazing adventure. In my own struggle with connection (guilt-wrapped in reticence), “Stars” gave me a map—a different route to intimacy.

The second verse is so soft, you might miss it if you’re not listening with your body:

*“When you’re doubting yourself, I’ll believe for us both,
Holding your hand, till you feel close.
We’re under one sky, with nothing to prove.”*

How rare and necessary a love, of any kind, that endures through self-doubt—and even rarer a song that so plainly offers it. For the longest time, I believed love meant being impressive, performing worth, compensating for my fears or silence or strange moods. The tenderness of Anne’s lyrics—“I’ll believe for us both”—is a communion. Maybe some days you don’t have strength; maybe the person beside you can carry enough for two.

In reviewing “Stars,” I’m not sure if I am unlocking the song, or if the song has slowly unlocked me. To hear it is to remember: it’s OK not to conquer yourself each day. It is enough to keep going, to let the mystery of “where we’re supposed to be” sit unspooling in the sky above. The need for forgiveness—of ourselves, of old dreams—runs alongside the need for gentle companionship.

I still have days where the light in my apartment tilts and everything hurts in its ordinariness. But I put “Stars” on, and am reminded that maybe ordinary isn’t something to be conquered, but something to bear, together. This is what the best country music has always done—reminded us, quietly, that the human stuff (doubt, longing, companionable silence) is where living happens.

For me, “Stars” is the best country song you’ve never heard, and that’s OK. It’s not loud enough for parties, dramatic enough for heartbreak playlists, or trendy enough for viral fame. It is, however, strong enough, gentle enough, for moments when you need to be believed in—when you need the strength to just keep looking up.

*Kroes den Bock*