Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 2005…

#3 – Kerosene – Miranda Lambert

In 2004, Miranda Lambert was a 20-year-old aspiring musician who had just finished third on the reality show Nashville Star. She recorded her first album, Kerosene, and released it the following year to positive reviews but little fanfare.

Nineteen years later, she has won more Country Music Association awards than any other artist in history, with 14 celebrated albums under her belt and a certain spot in the Country (and Rock?) Hall of Fame.

You’d think it would be tough to see all that success coming when listening to her debut, but Kerosene already feels like the work of a master. Four or five tracks on this album rank among my very favorites of hers, including ‘New Strings’ and ‘Mama, I’m Alright,’ two songs about leaving home to seek stardom.

Lambert’s genuine emotion around that experience shines through in her still-young vocals, more effective because the events were so fresh.

In other songs, she sounds just as genuine singing about complex romantic entanglements she had never experienced.

I didn’t discover Lambert until a few years later, when I fell in love with her second and third albums. I soon picked this one up and was dismayed — as a guy who likes to rank things — that I couldn’t count any of them as superior to the others.

That pattern has continued, with Lambert’s consistency making every one of her albums a candidate for her best. But I’ll always have a soft spot for this one that started it all.