By the time Miranda Lambert released her fourth solo album (and fifth straight album to debut at #1 on the country charts — a record), she was country music royalty.
She and Blake Shelton had overtaken Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as country’s preeminent power couple, she’d won more than 20 awards from the Grammys, CMT’s, CMA’s, ACM’s and all the rest, and she’d been widely accepted as the next Loretta Lynn. In fact, when Lynn presented her with one of those awards, it was viewed in the industry as a symbolic passing of the torch.