Miranda Lambert Insists ‘Wildcard’ Is Not a Happy Record

Miranda Lambert was in a happy place when she wrote and recorded her latest album, Wildcard, but that doesn’t mean the record is a happy record. The 36-year-old felt the freedom to record songs she wanted to, without following a specific theme. Although she fell in love and married Brendan McLoughlin, whose influence is woven throughout the project, Lambert hesitates to call all of Wildcard one specific emotion.

“I didn’t put too much emphasis on that,” Lambert told Taste of Country, speaking about her relationship with McLoughlin. “I usually write from my life so being happy and writing from a happy perspective was different than I had in a couple of records, but I don’t think it was the only reason. I didn’t change my sound. This isn’t a happy record, per se.

“I don’t like when people say The Weight of These Wings was a ‘divorce’ album because that’s everything it wasn’t,” she continued. “It’s a singer-songwriter album because I actually got to hone in on my craft. The same as this one, it’s just writing from an emotional place, but it’s not changing my sound or my position.”

More than her new husband’s influence, Lambert admits she may have never written the songs on Wildcard if she hadn’t released Interstate Gospel with the Pistol Annies last year.

“I kind of think that with the Annies we sort of dug really deep and got a lot of points across. It did free me up to get to not feel so, ‘I have so much to say still,’” Lambert acknowledged. “I kind of got out of that mentality and it gave me freedom to put songs — this record, I didn’t really have a running storyline theme. I just had a, ‘If I love it, it’s going on the record.’ I didn’t have to worry about ‘Did I say everything I wanted to say?’ because I kind of got the rest of it out. With The Weight of These Wings being a double album and then the Annies record, I kind of got it all out.”

Lambert might not call Wildcard a happy album, but she does acknowledge that the songs do show that she is in a good place in her personal life.

“I definitely think whatever’s going on in my life is reflected in my music all the time,” Lambert told PopCulture.com. “The best part of country music in general though, we tell our stories no matter what they are. So having some happier, more hopeful songs on this record is definitely a reflection of getting happy in life.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Mickey Bernal