“I don’t know that I am a pioneer,” Miranda Lambert says, with a laugh, before her appearance at the Country 2 Country festival in London. She’s the winner of two Grammys and 21 Academy of Country Music awards, unbeaten in the female vocalist category of the Country Music Association awards since 2010 and named the eighth highest-paid woman in music by Forbes at the end of last year, but she can’t retreat from the implication of her trailblazing status quickly enough. Pushed, she stretches to admitting that “I hope that I helped keep the door open,” before conscientiously naming Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline as the women who opened that door.
As self-effacing as Lambert is, it’s not a view shared by many. “She reopened the door for a movement of women singer-songwriters that had closed during the pop gloss of the late 90s,” says Nashville songwriter Shane McAnally, who first worked with Lambert on her 2011 hit Mama’s Broken Heart. “She didn’t play by the rules of her contemporaries, and it gave the entire genre – not just women – a new-found freedom.” In 2013, the critic Ann Powers said Lambert had reshaped the genre, calling her “the most important thing in mainstream country”. And as for her heroine, Loretta Lynn? Last month, releasing her first album in 12 years, she singled Lambert out for some high praise: “I think Miranda and me, we’re the same type of singer.”
Exactly what type of singer she is has been on Lambert’s mind. Last year marked the 10th anniversary of her debut album, Kerosene, on which she was a confrontational artist driven by anger, raw nerves and a desire to raze everything around her to the ground. “Forget your high society, I’m soakin’ it in kerosene / Line ’em up and watch ’em burn, / teach ’em what they need to learn,” she snarled on the title track over abrasive guitars. She took the scorched-earth approach to another level two years later with her second album, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Its lead single, Gunpowder & Lead, was a concise country masterpiece, a revenge fantasy sung from the perspective of a domestic abuse victim. Lambert revels in turning the tables, in deriving power from violence: the song’s bridge – “His fist is big, but my gun’s bigger; he’ll find out when I pull the trigger” – is a roar of triumph.
Her need to vocalise such pain came from what Lambert saw growing up - not within her own family, but from what her private investigator parents brought back to the family home in Texas. “They did lots of divorce cases, lots of cheating cases – our dinner conversations weren’t too normal,” she says. “My parents have been married for 35 years; I was safe and sheltered, but I’m glad I could see and hear more reality than that. People said, ‘Your family is a good, solid family,’ but we brought all the pain in.”
It wasn’t just talking shop, either: the Lambert family ended up taking in some of the abused women and children whose situations they had investigated. “I had Mom making cookies after school, and I also had moms whose partners were beating the crap out of them. Gunpowder & Lead was in my household for a long time.” During the 2012 Grammy awards, Lambert’s scathing Twitter commentary on what she saw as the music industry’s reacceptance of Chris Brown ignited a brief feud with the R&B singer; a few weeks later, she held up a “Take Notes Chris Brown” sign in concert as she sang Gunpowder & Lead. She has no regrets. “I don’t want young women to think that’s OK. That’s one thing I can speak on.”
Today, leaning back in a booth in an empty hotel ballroom, Lambert is soft-spoken and jetlagged. Country 2 Country isthe first time she will play live in the UK. Back home, she’s a tabloid fixture; here, where she’s been shopping and sightseeing unbothered, she doesn’t quite know what to expect. “I actually got a video from [last year’s festival] – Little Big Town sent it to me. It was the crowd saying, ‘Miranda, come over and see us!’ Well, at least they know me a little bit.” In the event, they know her more than that: Lambert basks in the audience’s love as she swaggers through numbers like Little Red Wagon and Baggage Claim.
If the first half of Lambert’s career was incendiary – “When you’re young you feel like you have to prove a point, and you scream it if you have to” – the second half has been trying to avoid being trapped by her reputation. “When I made [2010’s] Revolution, I was getting shoved into a corner,” she remembers. “It was important to say, ‘I’m not just that girl with fire in my head slingin’ my guitar around.’”
Lambert’s ambitious fifth album, 2014’s Platinum, encompassed not just her vulnerable side, but every female archetype she’s been expected to play – from the southern belle to the celebrity wife to the ordinary country girl she repeatedly describes herself as. It’s an album that makes a strong case for Lambert as the Beyoncé of country: two women in their early 30s reflecting on their lives, fame, roots and the complexities of their femininity.
The height of her career has coincided with the controversial rise of bro-country, the party-hearty, unabashedly male variant of country music. In this decade, it’s been hard for any women apart from Lambert and Carrie Underwood to gain traction on country radio in between songs driven by testosterone and beer. “It does irritate me,” she sighs. “You want party songs, but I wish there was more of the stuff that makes you feel a little deeper – I know country fans want that.”
But while Lambert can’t control the playlists, she has been using her leverage to help bring through different kinds of artists. Recent years have seen growing critical acclaim for a new wave of strong female voices: Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark, Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley. Musgraves was a childhood friend – and since 2011, Lambert has been playing alongside Monroe and Presley in the irrepressible, sardonic Pistol Annies. “That’s my heart, you know,” she says. “It was an outlet for all three of us to really exaggerate those parts of our personalities. We call it housewife-scorned music.”
The last year has been tough. In summer 2015, her marriage to Blake Shelton ended, after four years as country’s golden couple. In one of her few appearances since the Country Music Awards in November, Lambert chose to perform Bathroom Sink, her raw dissection of the beauty myth, instead of one of Platinum’s feelgood singles: “It was very important to me that I sang a song about real emotions from where I was in my life.” Otherwise, she’s gone to ground: there’s no timetable for her next album yet, but it will contain the most self-penned songs since Kerosene. “I’ve spent a lot, a lot, a lot of time writing lately,” she says. “I’ve had more time than I’ve ever had, so I’ve been able to write every day. I think I’ve been more honest – to myself, even. Not being afraid to lay it all out there. As I’ve gotten older I’ve laid it out there less at times in my career” – she lets out a tight laugh – “but now I’m just like, ‘Here it is, here’s my story.’ You can relate because everybody goes through shit.”
Two days after Country 2 Country, Lambert is still in Britain. Monroe is making her UK debut at London’s Bush Hall, and Lambert is her special guest for the encore. Monroe’s performance has been stellar and the reception has been rapturous; she’s visibly moved, remarking that she has failed to score a proper hit in the US yet. Lambert – who has, in all probability, not been on a stage at a 350-capacity venue for many years – stands looking proudly over applause that seems as if it will never stop. Beaming, she turns to her friend: “I’m going to video this. And I’m going to play it for you every morning to remind you that people love you.” She may insist that others kicked down the doors first – but there are plenty more still to fall, and Lambert’s determined not just to open them for herself, but to bring everyone she can with her.
