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Song of the Day #5,948: ‘Way Too Good at Breaking My Heart’ – Miranda Lambert

Continuing my ranking of the songs on Miranda Lambert’s new album, Postcards from Texas…

#2. ‘Way Too Good at Breaking My Heart’

Another song about chasing the wrong kind of love, and the inability to resist the one person you should be running from. I know I shouldn’t tie everything back to Lambert’s personal life — she’s a storyteller, after all — but I believe this whole album is about the breakup of her first marriage and the tumult of the years that immediately followed.

What I find fascinating is that she’s released four other albums since then and mostly stayed away from those topics. I wonder what prompted her to explore them now.

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Song of the Day #5,947: ‘Wildfire’ – Miranda Lambert

Continuing my ranking of the songs on Miranda Lambert’s new album, Postcards from Texas…

#3. ‘Wildfire’

Postcards from Texas‘ penultimate track is a sleepily sensual song about getting caught up in a passionate but unhealthy relationship. It’s a theme Lambert has explored often.

One of the reasons I love her music is how willingly she embraces her own messiness. In this song, with its dreamy guitars, she even romanticizes it.

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Song of the Day #5,946: ‘No Man’s Land’ – Miranda Lambert

Continuing my ranking of the songs on Miranda Lambert’s new album, Postcards from Texas…

#4. ‘No Man’s Land’

A recurring theme throughout Lambert’s career has been her restlessness. She has written at length about her inability to stay in one place, her desire to discover new people and places.

In ‘No Man’s Land,’ she explores for maybe the first time what that restlessness means when it comes to loving her. This is a warning about the challenge of winning her heart.

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Song of the Day #5,945: ‘I Hate Love Songs’ – Miranda Lambert

Continuing my ranking of the songs on Miranda Lambert’s new album, Postcards from Texas…

#5. ‘I Hate Love Songs’

Miranda Lambert has been married to her current husband longer than she was married to Blake Shelton, and she’s seemingly happier than ever. So I was quite surprised to find her writing at least a couple of songs on this album that explore the breakup of her first marriage.

‘I Hate Love Songs’ is one of them, and while I have no evidence that it’s about Blake Shelton, it’s hard to imagine it being about anyone else. And a song still to come on this list supports the theory.

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Song of the Day #5,944: ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ – Stevie Wonder

I’ve mentioned the song that topped Billboard’s Hot 100 the week of October 13, 1984, three times before on the blog, but this is its first appearance as a song of the day.

Stevie Wonder’s ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’ the lead single from the film The Woman in Red, is famous — in my book — for winning the Best Song Oscar over much superior competition. This treacly love song beat out Deniece Williams’ ‘Let’s Hear it for the Boy’ and Kenny Loggins’ ‘Footloose’ as well as Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ and Ray Parker Jr.’s ‘Ghostbusters.’

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