The Random iTunes Fairy is getting cute again, serving up a Miranda Lambert track the day after I posted the latest from Pistol Annies.
‘Babies Makin’ Babies’ is a cut from Lambert’s 2014 album Platinum, one of her most successful critically and commercially. The album ranked #12 on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics poll and topped the Billboard 200 album chart. Esteemed critic Robert Christgau praised it as “apolitical de facto feminism at its countriest” (I love that line).
For the second time since 2011, Miranda Lambert released my favorite album of the year. Platinum, like its predecessor, finds her at the peak of her powers, bending country music to her will, practically becoming her own genre.
The best song on an album full of great ones is ‘Priscilla,’ Lambert’s plea to the former Mrs. Presley for advice on how to manage a marriage in the spotlight.
This is Miranda Lambert’s second appearance on this list, counting her record with Pistol Annies. Will it be her last?
Every musical career evolves in a different way. All artists have ebbs and flows, some that come early, others that come late. Some start quietly, releasing forgettable albums through which they find their footing before making their mark a few records down the line. Others roar out of the gate with a striking debut only to fizzle a bit on a second or third album.
In a cute, and probably predictable, turn of events, my 8-year-old daughter Fiona has become a bigger Miranda Lambert fan than I am.
She insists on hearing “her favorite singer” every morning on the way to school and goes to bed each night with Lambert’s latest album, Platinum, playing on her nightstand.
She even has a grand plan to get on The Voice and choose Blake Shelton as her coach during the blind auditions so that she can go to his house and meet his wife. After which she’d quit the show.
I can’t call it a surprise when Miranda Lambert puts out an excellent album. This year’s Platinum is her seventh in a row, counting her work with Pistol Annies, and they just keep getting better.
What I love about Lambert is the confidence she has exuded right from the beginning.
It first manifested itself in tough-girl anthems written in defense of the battered women who shared her home when she was growing up. Now it shows up in the laid-back soulful groove of a song like ‘Smokin’ and Drinkin’,’ the sort of thing you’d never expect to hear on country radio.
Meet Me In Montauk 