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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.
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