Continuing my ranking of the songs from Miranda Lambert’s new album Palomino…

#9. ‘If I Was a Cowboy’

The album’s first single, and a song that might have been inspired by Beyoncé’s ‘If I Was a Boy,’ given Lambert’s professed love of Queen Bey. This song tackles gender roles, with Lambert imagining herself as a “legend at loving and leaving” in the Old West.

Lambert stays out of politics, a common stance for artists who rely on country music’s conservative fan base, but she has recently waded into the gay rights conversation, writing a song for the new season of Queer Eye and posting photos with her husband and gay brother at New York City’s Pride parade. This song contains a line that could be viewed as an embrace of the trans community: “So mamas, if your daughters grow up to be cowboys, so what?”

#8. ‘Geraldine’

Another track that showed up first on The Marfa Tapes, this is a rip-snorting twist on one of Dolly Parton’s most famous tunes. In this version, the wannabe home-wrecker doesn’t stand a chance: “You’re trailer park pretty, but you’re never gonna be Jolene.” The song gets a grungy rock makeover in this recording, and Lambert delivers one of her best vocals.

#7. ‘Actin’ Up’

On Palomino‘s opening track, Lambert makes it clear she’s staking out new ground on this album, with the slinky guitar noodling of the first two verses sounding unlike anything she’s released so far. She also packs in the playful wordplay, name-dropping Tiger Woods and ‘Mony Mony’ and declaring herself “hotter than wasabi.”