Miranda Lambert is opening up about a complicated period in her life.
Miranda Lambert is opening up about a complicated period in her life.
The 34-year-old country superstar dropped her sixth album, The Weight of These Wings, in 2016, but didn't do any press promoting it before its release. The album was written amid her divorce from ex-husband Blake Shelton, whom she split from in 2015 after four years of marriage.
In a new interview, she reveals why she made the decision.
"I came into [manager] Marion [Kraft]’s office and said, 'I’m not speaking to anyone until they hear this record,'" she recalls to HITS Daily Double. "That’s fair. I thought that was fair."
Lambert says the emotional songs speak for themselves.
"It was going to be hell, and I’d already been through hell," she says of purposely avoiding having to revisit her heartache. "It was hell putting it on paper, putting my words on paper. So, I didn’t want to rehash. I’d finally gotten to a place where I wasn’t sad anymore. All the sad moments were there, all the truths were right in those songs. All you had to do was listen. I didn’t need to say anything."
Later, Lambert recalls a negative experience with the press, when she was asked about Shelton's current girlfriend, Gwen Stefani.
"When the music was out, people had listened, I got on the phone for the first interview," she shares. "First question was, 'How do you feel about Gwen?' I hung up. I told Marion, 'I just can’t do this.'”
"What was in the music was real, and I wanted people to get it from that," she adds. "Take from it what they would. Then if I needed to talk, I would. But I haven’t really. Until now."
Of course, The Weight of These Wings was still both a critical and commercial success, going platinum. Lambert candidly opens up about writing the deeply personal album.
"Sometimes you have to wallow in it a little bit," she says of the pain she was feeling at the time. "You have to feel it. I remember telling [my producer] Frank right before I started writing, just the beginning of some turmoil… We were having drinks at the Red Door, and I remember saying, 'I’m about to feel a lot. I’m ready to feel every bit of it, and I’m gonna use all of it.' And he said, 'I’m in.'"
"I didn’t even know really what all it was gonna take to come out of it, but I was gonna feel it," she continues. "And I was gonna come out alive. Hungover a lot, maybe, but I was gonna get through it. Alive and feeling like death, but it was OK. It was true."
Lambert also talks about showing a softer side of herself that fans weren't used to.
"It’s just the other side of who I am," she notes. "It’s being a tomboy and wearing a dress. I have this swagger, as you’ve said -- 'firecracker,' 'firebrand,' 'little pistol' -- all my career, there are these quotes. And I am that. I’m proud of it. But as I said before, I felt like the first time people really heard me was 'House That Built Me.' It completely showed the other side of me. I love puppies and pink too. Going through all this life as a musician and writer, it’s both."
ET spoke to fellow country superstar Dierks Bentley in April, when he talked about his enduring friendship with Lambert. Watch below:
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