“It was just a record I needed to make,” says Miranda Lambert. In the aftermath of her very-public divorce from Blake Shelton, the Texas singer-songwriter needed to find a way to exorcise her pain and reclaim her story. So, she wrote a double-album called The Weight of These Wings. “I guess probably every artist has those songs or records in their timeline at some point. It’s just something you need to do for yourself.
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“Everything was so noisy and so chaotic in my life,” she tells fellow artist Kelleigh Bannen on the new episode of Essentials Radio. “I stopped talking. I was wearing all black on stage. I just stopped talking at all. I was like, ‘Man, I need to tell my story myself and where I’m at myself.'”
In their conversation, Lambert also traces back to her 2011 hit single “Over You,” which she co-wrote with Shelton, who’d lost his older brother when he was a 14-year-old. “It’s one of those moments where even if you’re married to someone, sometimes you find something new about them,” Lambert reflects. “Dudes don’t open up about things, but he started telling me about the experience of it all. I was like, ‘Have you ever written about it?’ And he’s like, ‘No… well, my dad just says, ‘You don’t get over it. You just get used to it.’
“And I was like, ‘Well, could we write it? Do you want to try or is that invasive? I would never try to write your story because I didn’t live it, but maybe I could help because I’m an outside perspective. I feel your pain talking to me right now,'” she continues. “It was really a special moment, and I’m so glad we shared that song and that it helped his family heal.”
Another career moment came with “The House That Built Me,” off her 2009 Revolution record. On a drive home from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport with Shelton, Lambert popped in a CD of song pitches, sent over from producer Scott Hendricks. “That song came, on and it was piano, male vocal. I think Tom [Douglas, songwriter] was singing it. And I literally was like, ‘You have to pull over.’ I was sobbing. [Blake’s] like, ‘This is really getting to you.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know what happened.’
“It overtook my body for some reason. I cared about it so much that I think it found its perfect home,” she adds. “It’s the greatest song I’ve ever recorded. I wish I would have written it.”
Lambert then took a moment to reflect on her current single, “Settling Down,” co-written with Luke Dick and Natalie Hemby. “That’s a title that I had written sitting in the passenger seat of the bus. I was thinking, ‘I miss home, but I’m really glad to be on the road.’ It’s always this thing. People with that gypsy spirit inside of them, it’s like you can’t quite nail it down. My mom always says to me, ‘You’re a wild child and a homing pigeon.’ She would say, ‘You have both.’ It’s a very confusing thing to have both. I’m very nesty, but I also need to go. I do love to be home, and I have a farm. That’s where I’ve been hanging out, but I don’t feel complete without the music in my life and without the road and without the people and the band and the camaraderie. I just need it, and that’s a good thing. That’s a good place to be.”
Lambert also discusses performing at CMA Fest for the first time, auditioning as Pistol Annies, and more. Listen to the conversation here.
