On November 10, 1983, Miranda Lambert was born in Longview, TX. Inspired by her guitar playing and songwriting father, Lambert grew up to be one of the most popular female country artists. From the start, Lambert dodged the conventional sound of other female country stars and forged her music career on her own terms. Her album sales, chart success and bevy of awards are a testament to the fiery singer’s success. As she explained in a recent Billboard interview, “I’m not trying to fit in, but I’m not trying to be an outlaw – I’m just trying to do me.”
To date, Lambert has sold seven million records, released five top-10 Billboard 200 albums and won countless awards, including two Grammys and 13 Country Music Awards. Additionally, she has won the Academy for Country Music’s Female Vocalist of the Year award for the past eight years. With her recent double album, “The Weight of These Wings,” she was nominated for the most awards at the 51st Annual Country Music Awards, winning Album of the Year. Fans and critics were expecting her latest release to be a stereotypical divorce album, since Lambert ended her four-year marriage to Blake Shelton in 2015. However, the country star stayed true to her convention-dodging self, refusing to make weepy breakup songs. If you listen to powerful tunes like “Tin Man” and “Vice” on the album, you’ll see why Lambert said she went into the studio with “guns blazing.” Yet, despite her confidence, talent and charisma, Lambert had to fight to create her own authentic path in country music.
Lambert was 16 when she impressed judges at the True Value Country Showdown Competition. Riding off that success, Lambert’s father fronted $6,000 for studio time in Nashville for his daughter. Amidst the chart topping romantic pop hits of Shania Twain and Faith Hill, producers and executives wanted to replicate a similar sound for Lambert’s first record. However, she wasn’t ready to sacrifice her authentic feisty self in exchange for country music fame. She left Nashville, returned home to Texas and asked her dad to teach her how to play guitar and write her own songs.
In 2003, when she was “discovered” at by winning the Nashville Star talent competition, Lambert landed a deal with Epic Records in 2005 and recorded her first major label album, “Kerosene,” that eventually went platinum. With a sound described by critics as “reality-based badassery,” Lambert lit fire to the country music charts with her confident voice. All four singles from her first album reached the Billboard Country Top 40. Her 2007 follow-up, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” scored Lambert her first Top 10 hit with the empowered anthem, “Gunpowder and Lead.” Her next album, “Revolution,” (2009) became her most critically acclaimed album with two now iconic country hits, “The House That Built Me” and “Love Like Mine.” Lambert’s next two albums, “Four The Record” (2011) and “Platinum,” (2014) yielded more hit songs. Lambert also teamed up with two other country artists to form the girl group The Pistol Annies, putting out two albums in 2011 and 2013.
You can catch Lambert on her “Livin’ Like Hippies” tour starting in January 2018. In the meantime, let’s wish her a very happy 34th birthday and thank her for staying true to herself!