Two years after her breakout sophomore album, Miranda Lambert returned to the airwaves with 2009’s Revolution, a sprawling, ambitious trek through a wide range of sounds and subject matter.

This was the album that earned Lambert mainstream attention, even before it was released. I read about her for the first time in an Entertainment Weekly article previewing Revolution and describing her brand of tough-girl-with-a-soft-side country music. The article piqued my interest but not enough to get me to buy the album.

It took Brad Paisley’s American Saturday Night to break down my resistance to country music. That album was released a few months before Revolution but I didn’t buy it until the year-end best-of lists started coming out. Both Paisley and Lambert were featured prominently so I finally took the plunge.

I didn’t buy Revolution right away, though, instead reaching back to Lambert’s breakthrough Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Only after falling hard for that album did I finally turn my attention to this one.

On Revolution, Lambert abandoned much of the fire-breathing she’d done on her previous record in favor of a more contemplative set. On songs such as ‘Makin’ Plans,’ ‘Dead Flowers,’ ‘Airstream Song’ and ‘Virginia Bluebell,’ she opts for a gentle delivery and intricate guitar work, delivering some of the loveliest songs in her catalog.

The album’s biggest hit turned out to be ‘The House that Built Me,’ a bittersweet reminiscence about a childhood home that really struck a nerve and won a host of awards.

Elsewhere on Revolution, Lambert does manage to rock out. In ‘Sin for a Sin’ (co-written with then-fiancé Blake Shelton), she finds her man in bed with another woman. In ‘Heart Like Mine,’ she figures that Jesus was a wine-drinking hell-raiser who would probably get along with her just fine. And on today’s SOTD, ‘Only Prettier,’ she has a blast tiptoeing around a stuck-up rival.