Miranda Lambert doesn't give a hoot about her bad reputation. In fact, the 23-year-old country sensation gets a kick out of the fact that so many people assume she's truly the bad girl that she portrays in her songs.
"A lot of people tell me, once they get to know me, that they're surprised that I'm nothing like they think I'll be," the Lindale, Texas, native says with a laugh over the phone from a tour stop in Delaware. "Yeah, I have a tough-girl image. People see me as someone who doesn't take any crap from anyone - which I don't - but it's my shtick, and I obviously don't act like that all the time."
Still, it's no mystery why Lambert is known as a bit of a loose cannon. On her platinum-selling premiere CD, 2005's rollicking "Kerosene," she made her name as a woman who wasn't above setting an ex's house on fire after he dumped her. Her gleeful explanation for exacting revenge with a few gallons of gasoline and a match: "You can't hate someone who's dead."
This spring's follow-up, "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend," should give her future paramours even more reason to think twice before getting on her bad side. Throughout the album's country-rock stompers and laments, she lies, breaks hearts, packs heat, murders an abusive ex and, in the psychotically fun title track, stalks a former lover and his new lady friend. Not for nothing, it turns out, was Lambert introduced at the Country Music Association Awards as "every man's nightmare."
Whether or not it's a reflection of her true self, that gloriously unhinged persona has helped make Lambert one of country music's most successful new artists. In the past few years she's scored two No. 1 albums, a Grammy nomination, two consecutive nods for the CMA's Horizon Award and stints opening for big shots including Keith Urban and Toby Keith. It seems the only thing she hasn't been able to do is win over radio, a lack that has left her without so much as a single Top 10 hit.
"I'd love to get played on the radio, but it just doesn't happen," Lambert says. "I really can't explain why. It's just really slow these days. It's hard because there are so many artists and not many spots on the radio. My single, 'Famous in a Small Town,' is stagnant in the 30s (on the charts) right now, but I'm hoping it will be the one that becomes my first real hit."
She laughs, and adds dryly, "Or even just a Top 30 hit."
Regardless of her lack of airplay, Lambert remains the biggest success story of the USA Network's "Nashville Star." In 2003, she got her start on that twanged-out equivalent of "American Idol," beating out thousands of hopefuls to finish third. Looking back, she believes it was actually a blessing that she didn't come in first.
"I don't think I was ready to win," she says. "Honestly, (winner) Buddy Jewell had been around Nashville for 10 years, singing and looking for a record deal. I was 19 and had never really been out of Texas, and I wasn't ready to make an album in two months. Getting third place got me all the exposure I needed, and I had time to do all I wanted to because I wasn't so rushed. The show was a huge steppingstone in my career."
The next step, Lambert says, is to convince people that there's more to her than just her rabble-rousing image because, while she loves that her strident, take-no-guff persona has resonated so strongly with her fans and critics, she hopes that they'll start paying more attention to the introspective side of her songwriting.
"I put those types of softer songs on my albums so people will actually hear them," Lambert says. "I'm proud of them."
The finest moments on "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" come when she's not singing about hunting down less-than-impressive men. Breathing new life into country music's tired, tear-in-my-beer tropes, its sparse, emotionally taxing songs such as "Desperation" and her rendition of "Easy From Now On" - a heartbreaker made famous by Emmylou Harris in the late '70s - are standouts.
"It's time for me, in my career, to really open up that vulnerable side of myself, even if it's scary to put that stuff into songs and put it out there in the world," Lambert says. "I think my fans are ready for that. They're starting to notice that I'm a tomboy but that I also have a girlie side. I'm not always a gun-totin' mama!
"But," she adds, laughing, "I don't think I'll ever get tired of talking about guns."
Thanks: AP