One piece of advice that successful artists like to give up-and-comers is to prepare themselves for rejection. Miranda Lambert found out what that’s like first-hand when she tried out for cheerleading as a high-school sophomore in Texas.
"I tried out and didn't make it, and I was just devastated," she told Dial-Global. "I remember my mom said, she goes, 'You sing. Why do you need to be screaming every Friday night in the cold?' At that time, I didn't like to hear that. I wanted to be a cheerleader, but then I just realized, that's the smartest thing she could have said. It's that simple. Like, I could just do what I do instead, and so from then on, I just did what I did."
Now Miranda gets a lot less rejection. She has a romance with Blake Shelton, who enlisted her to sing backing vocals on his current hit, "Home." And she’s getting plenty of thumbs up on her own from fans: Her latest single, "Gunpowder & Lead," is in the Top 10. That’s news worth cheering...no pom-poms needed.