Latest Release
- 13 SEPT 2024
- 14 Songs
- Twisters: The Album · 2024
- Whirlwind · 2024
- Wranglers - Single · 2024
- Drunk (And I Don't Wanna Go Home) - Single · 2021
- Rearview Town · 2018
- Space in My Heart - Single · 2024
- Wildcard · 2019
- Postcards From Texas · 2024
- Four the Record · 2011
- Revolution · 2009
Essential Albums
- It's tempting to view The Weight of These Wings as Lambert's "divorce album" following her split from Blake Shelton, and songs like the acoustic, regret-laden "Pushin' Time" certainly lend credence to that notion. But this ambitious, double-length LP illustrates the full range of her talents. A roadhouse-rockin' cover of Danny O'Keefe's 1971 tune "Covered Wagon", the throbbing indie-pop beat of "Six Degrees of Separation" and the funky slow-burn of "Pink Sunglasses" only hint at the wide terrain traversed here.
- Miranda Lambert is known for being a renegade, unafraid to let it all hang out—and this is probably her loosest album of all. She makes Platinum a party, opening up her door to a host of talented friends, including Little Big Town on the slow-rolling, R&B-flavoured "Smokin' and Drinkin'" and Carrie Underwood on the blues-rocking roof-raiser "Somethin' Bad". And whether she's delivering a honky-tonk ode to aging, like "Gravity Is a B**ch", or the wry, folky anthem of anachronism "Old Shit", Lambert sounds supremely comfortable in her own skin.
- Miranda Lambert was one of country music's most exciting 21st-century upstarts, crash-landing into the consciousness when she placed third on the country-idol competition Nashville Star in 2003. Her first two albums turned heads for her straight-shooting songs about life as an outlaw of womanhood. On Revolution, her third, she established herself as an artistic force, leaning into rock-influenced sounds as she continued to express her singular point of view on thrashing country-rockers and lacerating ballads alike. Revolution opens with "White Liar", a stomping rocker that combines its soaring chorus with fingerpicked guitars and a bridge that gives Lambert's lyrical task-taking a twist. Other tracks, like the chiming "Me and Your Cigarettes", which has a power-pop snap, and the anthemic "Heart Like Mine", which juxtaposes fantasies of drinking wine alongside Jesus with a grimy guitar solo, double down on Lambert's wild-woman status amid more rock-leaning arrangements. Lambert's cover of folk hero John Prine's 1976 lament "That's The Way That the World Goes ’Round", meanwhile, adds a pop-punk bounce to its head-shaking chorus, turning it into a 21st-century eye-roll that's capped off by a frenetic banjo solo. But it’s Revolution’s most bruised moments that reveal Lambert’s growth as a songwriter and singer. Lambert's vocal on the slow-burning elegy "Dead Flowers" is astonishing, adding woe to her descriptions of the mundane cruelty that transpires as two people drift apart. And the crystalline "The House That Built Me" peels back Lambert's tough-girl persona in a search for healing that takes her back home. Revolution reveals the deep emotional roots of Lambert’s renegade image in surprising and heart-rending ways, combining musical innovation and songwriting classicism in a way that she’d ride to country’s upper echelons over the next decade.
- Miranda Lambert flipped the bird to the sophomore slump with the release of 2007’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The album spawned her first Top 10 country hit—the soulful twang-rock corker “Gunpowder & Lead”—and was her first full-length to take home Album of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend covers vast stylistic ground: upbeat honky-tonk, scorching bar-band rockers and stripped-down midtempo ballads. A cover of the Emmylou Harris-popularised, Carlene Carter co-written “Easy from Now On” even boasts a gentle folk vibe. “Easy from Now On” is, in fact, one of the few songs Lambert didn’t write or co-write on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and the album’s tunes are almost exclusively written by women. That fact, more than anything else, explains why its main characters are emotionally complex females who enjoy toying with expectations—the cheeky dreamer of “Famous In a Small Town”, the narrator yearning for a drink in “Dry Town”. However, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s protagonists are generally preoccupied with much weightier topics. The wistful (if slightly bitter) “More LIke Her” is written from the perspective of a woman wronged by an ex with a wandering eye, while the heat-packing narrator of “Gunpowder & Lead” is getting revenge on an abuser. And the title track is meant to reclaim the insulting label as a badge of honour, although the main character’s reckless behavior (and white-hot rage) is anything but harmless. Lambert has continued to explore blurry moral middle grounds—and the power of righteous anger—on subsequent albums, but the gut-wrenching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend feels as honest and raw today as it did upon release.
Albums
Artist Playlists
- She proved there's still a place in Nashville for outlaws.
- An unapologetic outlaw attitude with a sense of humor.
- Miranda Lambert’s Vegas residency, “a honky-tonk on steroids”, wraps in December. Hear the set list.
- Lean back and relax with some of their mellowest cuts.
- Their lyrical and musical genius fuels some of the world’s biggest songs.
Appears On
- Pistol Annies
- Pistol Annies
More To Hear
- On fans keeping her honest and Postcards From Texas.
- The artists share how they give back and pay it forward.
- Lori discusses “Driving Back There in My Mind.”
- The artist on “Driving Back There in My Mind.”
- The singer on “Driving Back There In My Mind.”
- Miranda Lambert’s Palomino is a real trip.
- Ty Bentli looks back at Miranda Lambert’s sophomore smash hit.
More To See
About Miranda Lambert
In the mid-2000s, when new country outlaws were thin on the ground, a 21-year-old Texan came bursting into view with a hard-charging sound and a hit about burning down an unfaithful lover’s house (2005’s “Kerosene”). Despite her girl-next-door look, Miranda Lambert arrived as the badass country music had been waiting for. Her album Kerosene became the first in what would be a decade-plus string of No. 1 country LPs. When her follow-up, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, appeared in 2007, equally incendiary songs like the title track and “Gunpowder & Lead” helped cement Lambert’s status as Nashville’s hell-raising heroine. Over the next few years, singles such as the heart-tugging ballad “The House That Built Me” and the quirky, rock-inflected “Mama’s Broken Heart” showed that Lambert was an artist in motion, unwilling to stick to a formula. Her 2011 marriage to Blake Shelton expanded her celebrity status but didn’t dim her desire to keep evolving. That same year, she formed the side project Pistol Annies with fellow singer/songwriters Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe, and over several years of sporadic touring and recording, the trio found success with their own left-field approach to country. Lambert’s appropriately titled 2019 album, Wildcard, was her most eclectic record to date, as she swapped longtime producer Frank Liddell for Jay Joyce, who had produced as much rock as country. The result was a record that was as much cutting-edge alt-pop/rock as anything else, underlining her ongoing insistence on forward musical momentum.
- HOMETOWN
- Lindale, TX, United States
- BORN
- 10 November 1983
- GENRE
- Country