Miranda Lambert Opens up About ‘Dramatic’ Album, ‘The Weight of These Wings’ After Divorce

When Miranda Lambert released her heavy The Weight of These Wings album in 2016, she was fresh off of a highly-publicized and painful divorce with Blake Shelton, and was feeling a wide range of emotions. The record was far from happy, but was what Lambert needed to release at the time, before she could move forward.

“I needed to make that for my sanity and for my songwriting ability,” Lambert explained during Country Radio Seminar (CRS). “There’s a lot of people that told me later that they needed to hear that record too. It was dramatic, it was 24 songs. Most of them were sad, but I felt like, I was really a little bit exhausted of always keeping the sassy in my music.

“In my life, I was tired, because I was going through something hard,” she continued. “I didn’t want to be fake and put this record together that was all of that, when I wasn’t feeling that. I wanted to be honest. I’ve always been honest.”

Lambert is grateful that she released The Weight of These Wings, but she was also ready to move past it, which she did with her latest Wildcard album.

“Coming out of that, smiling and seeing a rainbow, I knew that I needed to go back to the bread and butter,” said the singer. “Also, being on tour with a record that’s somber, it’s hard to put a setlist together, because I have to go from ‘Tin Man’ to ‘Gunpowder and Lead,’ so I needed to close the gaps. Wildcard did that for my catalog.”

Kerosene, which was Lambert’s first record, and all of her other albums up until Wildcard, were produced by Frank Liddell, before Lambert made the decision, with Liddell’s blessing, to switch to Jay Joyce.

“I had meetings with Frank Liddell and we decided that we weren’t in the same spot, creatively,” Lambert recounted. “He gave me permission to go find what I needed.”

“I think there’s some magic in new energy, when you need to find a creative way to reinvent yourself,” she added. “When you have someone new, you have a different kind of energy and nervousness.”

Lambert is currently on her Wildcard Tour, with Cody Johnson and LANCO serving as her opening acts. Her latest single, “Bluebird,” is in the Top 30 and climbing.

Photo Credit: Getty