Miranda Lambert On Finding Peace In Her 40s, Life On Her Tennessee Farm, And Why Texas Will Always Be Home
Miranda Lambert On Finding Peace In Her 40s, Life On Her Tennessee Farm, And Why Texas Will Always Be Home
Emily McCullarMon, October 5, 2026 at 12:49 PM UTC
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Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby Guidara
Miranda Lambert doesn’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t know about Willie Nelson’s music or Crisco shortening.
“Certain memories are burned in your brain of a certain song or smell or taste, but some things have just been there forever,” Lambert tells me as we sit in the fully stocked bar on the second floor of the barn at her Tennessee farm. There’s a flurry of activity below us—whinnies from the horses, chatter from the photo team as they pack up the shoot, and the subtle purr of her delightfully friendly cat Ravioli. But once we shut the sliding doors, we can talk comfortably in the little haven, which is equal parts dive bar and playhouse with a jukebox, a roulette-wheel shot glass holder, a shuffleboard table, and statues of both Marilyn Monroe and Jack Daniel.
Although Lambert’s love for Nelson has been omnipresent in her decades-long career, she’s only just now giving her favorite brand of shortening a proper shout-out (and a pretty big one at that). It’s actually the title of her 10th solo studio album, released in October.
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby Guidara
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby Guidara
Crisco came together so naturally, it was as if her creative gears had been greased by the namesake pantry staple. It all started with a portmanteau. “Somebody told me ‘country’ and ‘disco’ [together] is ‘Crisco,’ ” recalls Lambert. “I was like, ‘I’m going to chase this down.’ ” She’d enjoyed working on the 2025 hit “A Song To Sing,” a glittery Dolly Parton- and Kenny Rogers-style duet with Chris Stapleton, and she wondered about putting together a whole album with the same retro lilt. Once she started, she was having so much fun that she couldn’t help but keep going. “It came easily,” she says of the writing process. “Anytime the universe is pointing to something, I try to listen.”
The universe, it turns out, pointed Lambert toward 12 tracks that serve as odes to the colorful country pop of yore. The opener, “Snakeskin Boots” (a duet with her “Choosin’ Texas” cowriter Ella Langley), evokes Nancy Sinatra in knee-high platforms with a still-smokin’ pistol in her right hand. Lambert dips back to the 1950s with a couple of torch songs that could’ve been written for Patsy Cline herself, but the best-represented decade is the 1970s. Crisco features sonic and lyrical references to Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, and Jerry Reed. She even covers Jim Croce’s “I’ll Have To Say I Love You in a Song.” The album feels like it should only be performed on a long, skinny microphone by someone sporting polyester bell-bottoms and feathered bangs.
Crisco also pays homage to the women in Lambert’s life (her mom, her grandmother, and the countless aunties chronicled in her 2023 cookbook, Y’all Eat Yet?), who inspired her both in the kitchen and beyond. “My grandmother did teach me how to fry chicken with Crisco,” Lambert says.
Although these tracks look backward musically, they advanced her into new territory. With most of her projects, she’s taken a “may the best song win” approach, writing a bunch and then picking a dozen or so favorites. Crisco was an opportunity to build something around a specific theme. “Every little piece of the puzzle needed to fall in line to make it a body of work,” explains Lambert of the process, which she repeatedly says was extremely fun. She also got to incorporate a string section for the first time in her career. “A huge piece of this puzzle was having strings, because I’ve never gotten to do it,” she says, “and it’s magical.”
Perhaps the greatest distinction between Crisco and Lambert’s earlier albums is that she’s not anxious about its release. “I always get weird when records come out, because it’s your heart on a page,” she says. “I don’t feel worried about this one, because I never really set out to have any expectation for it except to enjoy it. I think that’s a good place to be.”
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby GuidaraLife on the Farm
More than 20 years into her career, the soon-to-be 43 year old lives a life more in line with peaceful enjoyment than the fire accelerant-and-firearm themes that used to define her music. Splitting her time between Tennessee and Texas, Lambert is calmest at her farm, named Flying Pistols, which is about an hour from Nashville. “I run out here every time I get the chance,” she says. “I’ve come here before just to pet horses and take a nap.” There are as many as a dozen of these animals on the property, depending on the time of year, but the singer is especially bonded with Cool, a handsome quarter horse.
Lambert gets fidgety if she spends too much time away from Texas, though. She has family still living in her hometown of Lindale—with a population of around 7,000—and goes back about every six months. She and her husband, former NYPD officer Brendan McLoughlin, also own a home in Austin. That’s the city in which Big Loud Texas, the record imprint she founded with John Randall in 2023, is based. She’s a frequent visitor to its headquarters, housed in a 19th-century mini-mansion that was decorated by the Junk Gypsies of HGTV fame (sisters Amie and Jolie Sikes). But the pull of Texas is not just professional. It’s on a deeper level. “Right now, I haven’t been in three or four months,” Lambert says. “I’m getting a little like, ‘I need a Buc-ee’s. I need a barbecue. I need to go see Randy Rogers.’ ”
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby Guidara
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby Guidara
The Nashville Sisterhood
Something that keeps Lambert from spending more time in her home state is how much she loves her community in Tennessee, a broad cohort of friends and collaborators, including Langley as well as Lainey Wilson. Lambert says there’s a real “sisterhood” in Nashville. “It gets hard out there, the highs and the lows,” she explains. “You need somebody to bounce it off of sometimes.” She’s also happy to be a sounding board for the next generation. “Miranda’s one of those friends who just gets it,” says Wilson. “I know she’s gonna shoot me straight. That kind of friendship is hard to come by in this business. I sure don’t take it for granted.”
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Lambert doesn’t either. “I’m learning from younger people about how they’re doing it, because everything’s completely different than it was when I was coming up,” she says.
Indeed, the industry is practically unrecognizable now thanks to streaming, and some of these changes have been positive, especially for female performers. For years, country radio had unspoken rules against featuring too many women. Even today, if you compare Billboard’s Hot Country Songs with its Country Airplay rankings, you may find that the latter’s lineup is noticeably more male. But radio doesn’t hold the same sway it did two decades ago.
In her early days, Lambert was the poster child for critical and commercial success, despite getting surprisingly low airplay. “The way music is heard now and the way it’s delivered to the public, it’s like they’re in charge. They pick what they love. It’s not like we’re all fighting for the same 30 spots on the country charts anymore,” she says. “Country music always has stages and phases and ups and downs, but I haven’t seen this many women winning since probably the 1990s. When I say ‘winning,’ I don’t mean awards. I mean just being out there doing the damn thing. It’s really good to see. I know what that takes, so I respect it a lot and am thankful to be part of it.”
"“I run out here every time I get the chance. I’ve come here before just to pet horses, and take a nap.”"
Miranda Lambert
Nashville veteran Allison Moorer, whom Lambert has called her “hero” and “number one favorite singer-songwriter of all time,” recognizes her impact. “I don’t think her influence stops with women,” Moorer says. “She’s always stood head and shoulders above most everyone else because she’s that good and she’s that talented at all of it—the songwriting, the records, and the shows.”
And Langley agrees. “Miranda was somebody I grew up listening to and looking up to. She is who she is, and she doesn’t apologize for it. That’s something that was always apparent to me watching her when I was younger and definitely inspired me to be confident in my artistry,” she says. “It’s pretty surreal to now get to work alongside somebody I grew up admiring.”
Lambert eagerly stepped into this mentorship role, and Moorer says it’s “fantastic” how much success Lambert has seen as a songwriter and producer for younger artists. “No one has a 20-year career without being highly intelligent, so it’s gratifying to see her be held up as an example of what mainstream success can be,” she notes.
Credit: Photo: James Macari; Wardrobe Styling: Tiffany Gifford; Hair: Davy Newkirk; Makeup: Moani Lee; Prop Styling: Ruby GuidaraLearning To Have Fun
Mainstream success, it turns out, can be quite peaceful. At least it is for Lambert these days. She’s happy in her relationship with McLoughlin, her husband of seven years (who has five writing credits on Crisco, she shares proudly). She’s become a morning person, a change she attributes mostly to being over the age of 35. “I love having my day,” she explains. Lambert has also expanded her creative horizons. “I started painting these cowboys. Actually, I painted some to put in the vinyl inserts for the album promo,” she says. This year, she’s picked up golf, too, calling it “the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done in my life.” She admits to having a love-hate relationship with the sport, adding, “I think that means I’m a golfer.”
Professionally, she enjoys focusing on her many collaborations, including “Horses and Divorces” with onetime rival Kacey Musgraves. “It worked out really well, because we got to air out some things we needed to say to each other while writing this song about coming back together, which was really cool. And I love the way it turned out,” she says. “To me, it feels a little like Willie and Waylon.”
Lambert loves writing with—and for—others. She notes that learning their processes helps get her out of her own bubble and keeps her creative gears in motion, even when she doesn’t feel like writing for herself. “I’m not really ready to start a ‘Miranda’ journey right now. I’m like, ‘I just finished a record. I’m having fun with that,’ ” she says.
But she does have one wish for the album’s rollout. “I’m hoping Crisco makes a comeback,” she says. “We gotta get some TikTokers frying some chicken up in here.”
on Southern Living
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
