There wasn’t much of a honeymoon for Miranda Lambert and her husband, Brendan McLoughlin last year. Only three days after the couple tied the knot in a surprise ceremony, on Jan. 26, Lambert was back at work, writing songs for her latest Wildcard album, including her current single, “Bluebird” –– and surprising co-writers Luke Dick and Natalie Hemby with the good news.
“I felt like for that song I might as well tell my news to my friends, because I felt like it would really add [to it],” Lambert recalled to Billboard. “And it turned out that it did.”
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“She poured a glass of wine and held up her hand,” Hemby, a member of The Highwomen, added. “She goes, ‘I got married three days ago.’ And Luke and I started laughing; like, we just couldn’t believe it. Brendan is so sweet, and they’re so happy.”
Lambert’s Wildcard album is her seventh, and her fourth with a one-word title (the others being Kerosene, Revolution and Platinum). The title of Wildcard came from a line in “Bluebird”: “And if the house just keeps on winning / I got a wildcard up my sleeve,” but she also had another reason for wanting to keep the title to just one word for the project.
“My one-word titles have been special records, a little more special than the others for some reason or another,” Lambert explained. “So I wanted a one-word title, but I wanted it to be right.”
Both writing and recording “Bluebird” happened fast for Lambert, which is at least partly because of the good mood she was in after tying the knot with McLoughlin.
“I’m a Scorpio, and I’m a woman, so that equals emotion,” Lambert noted. “If you’re in the room with musicians and you’re putting down this track of a song that you love dearly, you’re going to sing like [the room feels]. But if you’re running in there at 2:30 and you’re like, ‘I have an hour before my next interview, I’m going to get this vocal,’ it just doesn’t work for me, you know. I have to be put into place. I guess it’s almost like an actress being put in her role at the time. Like it’s hard to snap in and out.”
As for the record’s title, it isn’t lost on Lambert that she, perhaps unexpectedly, got exactly what she wanted out of life.
“That smile may just be the wildcard I pulled out of my sleeve this time because of where I’ve gotten in my life,” Lambert said. “The title just fit.”
Lambert’s Wildcard Tour kicks off on Thursday, Jan. 16, in Tupelo, Mississippi. Find tour dates at MirandaLambert.com.
Photo Credit: Leah Puttkammer / FilmMagic