9 Things to Know About Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert is one of the biggest stars in country music but there might still be a few things some fans don’t know about the Texas native.

After releasing her first album, Kerosene, in 2005, Lambert has gone on to release six more studio albums and headline over 10 tours. She is the most-awarded artist in ACM Awards history, has won two Grammy Awards and is the first woman to have won the Country Music Association Awards’ Album of the Year twice. She is also a member of the Pistol Annies, a trio she formed with friends Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe. This year, the 37-year-old became the most-nominated female artist in CMA Awards history when she earned 7 nominations for the 2020 show, which takes place on Wednesday.

Read on to learn a little more about Lambert.

Her parents were private investigators

Lambert’s parents, Rick and Bev, were private investigators, and often took abused women into their home to protect them from their husbands. Sometimes, the couple even used their daughter to help out into their investigations, some of which were detailed in Virginia Hanlon Grohl’s book From Cradle to Stage: Stories from the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars.

“[One] caper involved dressing Miranda in a junior-high cheerleading costume and sending her out ‘selling candy for the school’ so that she could look for the incriminating evidence her parents needed,” Grohl wrote.

She tours with an airstream trailer named Wanda

Lambert’s fans are very familiar with Wanda, the star’s 1954 airstream that’s named after her maternal grandma and furnished with a lounge area and full bar inside and a sparkling tiara on top.

“Wanda has been on the road for 8 years and is our center,” Lambert wrote in a recent Instagram post. “The place where the whole tour gets together to celebrate what we do. She is a little piece of home on the road for all of us.

She collects salt and pepper shakers

“I love all things vintage, and I have a growing collection of salt-and-pepper shakers,” Lambert told Country Living. “I have about 50 sets right now, and it’s getting out of control. My favorite — a ’55 Chevy with an Airstream — came from a fan.”

She added to Us Weekly that she used to collect bells before switching to the kitchen staples.

She was so shy in school she wouldn’t speak

Bev Lambert told Marie Claire that when Lambert was young, the star’s teachers often called her with concerns about Lambert’s development until the fifth grade.

“Miranda started off extremely shy,” Bev said. “She wouldn’t speak. Not a word at school. If she had to order her own food, she’d just not eat.”

The tipping point for Lambert was when her mom put her in the debate club her freshman year of high school.

“It was full-on meltdown, sobbing, bawling, ‘Come get me, I’m quitting school,’” Bev recalled, though she noted that after her daughter won her debate on Democrat vs. Republican ideals during the 1996 election, “it was the beginning of her whole life changing.

She was voted Most Likely to Be a Country Star

In 6th grade, Lambert was voted Most Likely to Be a Country Star by her classmates in Lindale, Texas — clearly, her peers made the right choice. Lambert shared the fact with Us Weekly, and also revealed that she played shortstop on her Little League softball team when she was younger and played Annie Oakley in a high school play.

Her first demo was of more pop-sounding songs

When Lambert was younger, she recorded a demo of more pop-leaning songs but knew they weren’t the right fit and learned to play guitar so she could write her own.

“My dad bought me a guitar when I was like 10, and I didn’t really want it then,” she told Redbook. “But I did this demo in Nashville when I was 16 with some songs [that had been chosen for me] that were really sweet pop-y country. They didn’t move me at all. When I came home, I was like, ‘I have more to say.’ So I went to Dad and said, ‘That guitar. How about teaching me a few chords?’ I wrote my first song in two days. It felt like, ‘Right! This is what I was supposed to do!’”

She has a signature cocktail

The Texas native doesn’t shy away from a good drink, and even has a signature cocktail named the Randarita that’s made of vodka, water, sugar-free Crystal Light and diet carbonated lemon-lime soda.

“My trainer, Bill, approves,” Lambert previously joked to Great American Country. “I mean, he’d rather me not drink, but that’s not an option. I have one before a show and a half during. Later, if I want to throw down, I throw down!”

Her favorite dish is her mom’s meatloaf

One of Lambert’s favorite foods is her mom’s meatloaf, which contains beef, pork and Saltine cracker crumbs. She told Taste of Home that it’s a family request for birthday dinners, as is her dad’s chicken fried steak.

In addition to meatloaf, Bev Lambert has handed down numerous recipes, including barbecue sauce — “the surprise ingredient is 1/4 cup of beer. It was handed down from my grandpa’s days in the military,” Lambert said — and “Magic,” which involves “1 cup crunchy peanut butter, 1 cup granulated sugar, 1 egg (from our own chickens) and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Combine, roll into golf balls, crisscross with a fork and bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees.”

She cites Mariah Carey as one of her biggest inspirations

Fans might be surprised to learn that Lambert counts Mariah Carey as a big inspiration when it comes to her musical career.

“When I was growing up, I really used to sit and watch VHS tapes of Mariah Carey’s live shows,” Lambert once told Seventeen magazine. “I guess she was a pretty big inspiration.”

The 35-year-old has also said that she is inspired by Holly Dunn, Sara Evans, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Emmylou Harris and Patti Loveless, among many others.