Miranda Lambert has won just about every country-music award in existence, but her barometer for success is rather simple: Do drag queens want to perform your songs onstage?
“If someone dresses like you and covers you in a drag show, to me, you made it,”
Lambert says, settling into a couch in the Rolling Stone offices in denim, a brown suede jacket, and, lest you forget where she’s from, a Texas-shaped turquoise ring big enough to double as a weapon. Lambert loves a drag performance so much that when she first teased her new album, Crisco, this past summer, she did so with an event that she called a Crisco Disco Drag Brunch in Nashville.
“I don’t know if there’s a more joyful place on Earth than a drag brunch,” she suggests. “It’s just, like, mimosas and people being their full selves and no-holds-barred. It felt like it would set the tone for this record.”
Crisco gets its name from that same tone — a perfect blend of country and disco. Think “Islands in the Stream”-era Dolly Parton, lush and layered strings, and rhinestone cowboys. At a point in her career when she’s arguably never been more lauded, Lambert just wanted to have a little fun. “I felt like now more than ever, what’s to lose?” she says.
In the past few years, Lambert, 42, has taken what was already one of country music’s most celebrated careers into powerhouse, multi-hyphenate mode. She’s a producer, most recently helping Ella Langley craft her breakthrough album, Dandelion. She’s a label owner, a fashion entrepreneur, and now, as co-writer of Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” partly responsible for the most successful song in Billboard Hot 100 history. She’s nominated for seven trophies at the Nov. 18 CMA Awards, in a year when she didn’t even put out an album of her own (Crisco won’t be eligible till next year’s awards).
Lambert realizes that disco influences might feel left field for some country fans, but she had such a good time dabbling in Seventies sounds on the groovy, glistening “A Song to Sing,” her collab with Chris Stapleton last year, that she and co-producer Jesse Frasure thought they’d try writing a few more in that vein. It’s a part of the genre that Lambert hadn’t really explored before — a little less cool than the Outlaws, a little less trendy than the Nineties. “The Seventies is such an inspiring time in music in general, and especially in country music,” Lambert says. “Great songs were great songs, and it didn’t have to live in a box.”
‘I never took the easiest path’
Crisco does have a delightful pop sheen. Listen to the crescendoing “To Everything,” or the Langley duet “Snakeskin Boots,” which opens the album with that familiar Lambert fire. But there are also straight-up country ballads like the Patsy Cline-inspired “Two Things Can Be True,” which happens to be a good reminder that, on top of all of those other accolades, Lambert is one of the best vocalists in the genre and beyond. She’s also as saucy as ever, never one to tone down a woman’s sexuality, like on “Whiskey Business,” where she’s “gonna go all night and sleep all afternoon.” She probably won’t be riding any literal disco testicles onstage like Kacey Musgraves has, though. “I’ll have some disco balls, but they won’t be balls, if that makes sense,” Lambert quips.
Musgraves recently featured Lambert on her song “Horses and Divorces,” a hilarious burying-the-hatchet moment between two stars who were rumored to have beef for years. In a genre where female artists rarely receive more than 10 percent of country-radio airplay and are constantly forced to battle for one or two top spots, Lambert wants to focus on what she can do to elevate other women instead of competing with them.
“We need to do this together,” she says. “We don’t have to be best friends all the time. We don’t have to be a sisterhood all the time, but I think it’s really important to lean on each other when we need to, and to support each other, because we know what it takes to do this. And it ain’t easy.”
When Lambert released her debut in 2005, she didn’t have a lot of women around to help guide her through the early stages of fame. Being that person for newer artists like Langley — a mentor, a sounding board, a creative partner, and a cheerleader — is a motivating force behind so much of what she does now.
“Working with Miranda was special because she’s someone I’ve looked up to long before I ever imagined getting to make a record with her,” Langley tells Rolling Stone. “And beyond that, she’s so generous and honest, and she brings that into the way she works. She gave me the confidence to trust my instincts.”
It was a collaboration that paid off in spades with “Choosin’ Texas,” which has not only commanded the charts but also the discourse this year, as critics and fans have tried to figure out why and how it broke through the noise so resoundingly. What those conversations sometimes missed is that Lambert’s legacy, in part, is what made “Choosin’ Texas” possible. Her hits like “The House That Built Me,” “White Liar,” and “Mama’s Broken Heart” introduced a certain kind of Texas twang to radio, while 2021’s The Marfa Tapes, recorded in her home state, kept the focus on sturdy songwriting.
“I hope that some of the trails that I was able to blaze are the reason that some of this is happening,” Lambert says. “Because it was hard work, and I never took the easiest path. I took the authentic path, and it feels like those doors that were open have stayed open and people are blazing through them.”
Crisco feels authentic to exactly who Lambert is now. She’s as serious about songcraft as ever, but happier too, and willing to get a little loose on the dance floor. Lambert likes being many things at once, even if convention finds it unsettling. One day, she’s shooting pistols on horseback; the next, she’s shimmying at the gay bar. She can make acoustic albums in the Texas desert, or she can add in a string section and take it to Studio 54.
It’s time to head out to another Crisco playback, this time at a queer-friendly Lower East Side spot called HiLot, so Lambert ducks into a room to change into a shirt decorated in rhinestones that once belonged to Parton — she affectionately dubs them “Dolly drops.” Lambert wore Parton’s hoops in the video for “A Song to Sing,” and she has a lot of “Dolly nuggets” in the new house she’s building in Tennessee with her husband, former NYPD officer and now sometime songwriter Brendan McLoughlin. “Would I be sitting here without [Parton]? Probably not,” Lambert says.
Like Parton, Lambert prefers to stay out of partisan politics, but that doesn’t mean she won’t defend some of her Lone Star traditions (and icons). Last year, at the Kennedy Center Honors, where she paid homage to Texas legend George Strait, the security measures irked her. The bar at the hotel closed early, and Lambert had gotten word that Strait (a.k.a. “The King”) wanted to have a little bit of a post-gala afterparty there. McLoughlin, ever the dutiful partner, sprung into action.
“My husband, he had just enough of a buzz,” Lambert says. “So he goes, ‘I’m taking this the fuck over!’ He goes up to our room and orders a cart of all the things, bottles. Rolls it back down, and starts moving chairs to rope off an area. Going, ‘Excuse me, this is for the King.’” At one point, McLoughlin even snubbed Sylvester Stallone, another Kennedy Center Honoree who had wandered into the bar. “Brendan was like, ‘I would rather Sylvester Stallone kick my ass than the wrath of you for me not taking care of the King.’”
It had already been a long day. The sewage system in the backstage bathrooms had been backing up (“It was a shit show, literally,” Lambert says), and, worst of all, she wasn’t allowed to bring in any aerosol cans.
“I mean, we have to have hair spray,” she proclaims, clutching a Tito’s vodka after we’ve made our way downtown to the party. “I’m from Texas!”
Production Credits
Styling by TIFFANY GIFFORD. Hair by JOHNNY LAVOY. Makeup by Dee DALY.
Clothing Credits
Studio
Jacket by DZOJCHEN and INGLESIDE DESIGN via BROOKLYN PR. Vest by TECOVAS. Hat by STANDARD HAT WORKS. Jewelry by JENNIFER FISHER, ESTABLISHED, NECESSARY EXCESS and MUD LOWERY.
Bar: Shirt by H BAR C via INGLESIDE DESIGN. Jeans and belt by IDYLLWIND via INGLESIDE DESIGN. Belt buckle by RICHARD SCHMIDT. Jewelry by TENNESSEE TURQUOISE COMPANY
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