Miranda Lambert

The country songs of Nashville's singer-songwriter Miranda Lambert (born in Texas) couldn't be more old-fashioned. After a Miranda Lambert (2001), with Texas Pride and Somebody Else, she established herself as a angry young woman of country music on the self-penned Kerosene (2005), containing Me and Charlie Talking and Kerosene, followed by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2007), with Gunpowder and Lead, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Me and Charlie Talking, perhaps the narrative and introspective peak of her writing. She then flirted with rock music on Revolution (2009), whose Only Prettier is entertaining.

Her fame further increase when she married country star Blake Shelton, and Four the Record (2011) was duly hiped, despite containing only mediocre material like Over You. The booming and polished sound of Platinum (2014) marked a significant change in musical attitude, but the potential is reflected only in the pulsating jump-blues Little Red Wagon and in the swinging ragtime Gravity's a Bitch, both of which sound like parodies; while the center of mass clearly belongs to melancholy singalongs such as Hard Staying Sober and to pensive ballads such as Smokin' and Drinkin'. Anyway, a breath of fresh air for country music.

Meanwhile, she had formed the Pistol Annies with Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley, which debuted with Hell on Heels (2011). After the mediocre Annie Up (2013), that contains the single Hush Hush, they disbanded and she went back to her solo career with the double-disc The Weight of These Wings (2016). This sprawling album contains no filler but too many plain songs that ruin the otherwise poignant atmosphere created by the meditative and philosophical Runnin' Just In Case, the visceral and jarring Vice, the ethereal and stately Smoking Jacket, and the somnolent and romantic Well Rested. She also shows her tougher side in Highway Vagabond, that goes from quasi-dub to garage rave-up, the breezy how-down You Wouldn't Know Me, the Tom Petty-esque folk-rock of Ugly Lights (perhaps the melodic peak), the raunchy blues shuffle Covered Wagon, the pulsating boogie Six Degrees Of Separation (in which she sounds like a girl-group of the 1960s), the melancholy and anthemic singalong I've Got Wheels, and the effervescent rocking For the Birds.

The Pistol Annies reunited for Interstate Gospel (2018), with the touching elegy Milkman and the dreamy Commissary, and Lambert released the solo Wildcard (2019), produced by Jay Joyce.

Miranda Lambert's Palomino (2022), co-produced and co-composed by Jon Randall and Luke Dick, indulges in classic Nashville country-pop (If I Was a Cowboy, Strange) but also contains propulsive songs like the rocking Actin’ Up, the anthemic Geraldene and the weird collaboration with the B52's, Music City Queen.