“You Need to Cut It”: The Miranda Lambert No. 1 Hit Initially Written for Blake Shelton

Don’t get us wrong; Miranda Lambert is still a powerhouse country musician. However, how she dominated country airwaves from the early to mid-2010s was otherworldly. With songs such as “Gun Powder and Lead,” “White Liar,” and “Mama’s Broken Heart,” Lambert dominated the award season and the charts for years. Although accolades aside, one of her most famous tracks nearly never belonged to her.

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Between 2006 and 2015, Lambert and Blake Shelton were country music’s biggest celebrity couple. That being so, the two seemingly used each other as sounding boards for both their music. Well, lucky for Lambert, if it wasn’t for this facet of their relationship, she would have never heard and recorded her first No. 1 hit, “House That Built Me.”

Why Blake Shelton Gifted The Song To Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert has, for the most part, always written or at least co-written the majority of her songs. However, she did not write her decorated track, “House That Built Me.” Rather, the two songwriters who completed this task were Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin. As a matter of fact, they didn’t just complete this task, but they completed this task in an impressive 45 minutes. Though, nobody picked up and recorded the song until seven years after its inception.

Douglas told the Tennessean, “We were so convinced we had a classic, we’d get together for years and think, ‘What is wrong with it? Why isn’t it resonating?” Regarding the song coming to fruition, Douglas and Shamblin approached and offered the song to Blake Shelton. As they never pictured a female artist singing and recording their song. Although, when Shelton heard it for the first time, so did Lambert, and her reaction to it solidified her spot as the track’s singer.

Lambert recalled on Today, “It was beautiful” and “I mean, I just started bawling from the second I heard it. [Shelton] was like, ‘If you have a reaction to this song like that, then you need to cut it.’” Following her initial reaction and Shelton’s willingness to give it up, Lambert recorded a hit.

After the song released in 2009, Lambert garnered her first No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and the single peaked at No. 28 on the Billboard Hot 100. Furthermore, Lambert also received several ACM and CMA awards for the song, and was also nominated for a Grammy. Needless to say, but this was seemingly the song that launched Miranda Lambert into a decorated stature. And funny enough, it wasn’t even meant to be hers.

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