With a strong will and brazen sense of humor, Miranda Lambert has always proudly represented her native Texas with her music. But the country star's tenth album might just be her most inspired by the Lonestar State yet — which is exactly why it's titled Postcards From Texas.
Recorded at Austin's famed Arlyn Recording Studios, Postcards is full of hard-driving honky-tonk sounds and references to home running through every lyric. Along with being Lambert's first album with Republic Records — her new label home after 20 years on Sony Music Nashville — Postcards also marks the singer/songwriter's first solo studio album recorded in Texas since her 2001 independent, self-titled debut. Similar to that album, Postcards is a record as Texan as they come, and marks a full-circle moment for the trailblazing artist.
"I just felt like finally, I'm home," Lambert told Variety earlier this year. "I feel like that on the label; I feel like that recording it in Texas. And this music really reflects what made me the artist that I am."
Postcards takes listeners on a road trip-like experience with songs referencing familiar Texas towns like Luckenbach ("Looking Back On Luckenbach") and San Antonio ("Alimony") along with more obscure places like (90 miles from) Pecos ("No Man's Land"). The "I've Been Everywhere" narrative is a combination of her previous two records — 2021's The Marfa Tapes and 2022's Palomino — that see her jamming around a campfire alongside frequent collaborators (and fellow Texans) Jack Ingram and Jon Randall one moment, and running down the highway coast to coast the next. Only on this trip, all roads lead to Texas.
Lambert's affinity for home comes at a time when the three-time GRAMMY winner is at peace in her life and career perhaps more than ever, thanks to her new label and marriage to former NYPD officer Brendan McLoughlin. In turn, Postcards From Texas is a testament to just how far she's come since trying to break through as a female country artist in Texas in the early 2000s ("The Texas scene wasn't a place for girls at all back then," she told NPR in 2019).
Despite any setbacks in her home state, Lambert moved to Nashville in 2003 following a third place finish on the now-defunct singing competition "Nashville Star," which helped her land a deal with Sony Music Nashville later that year. Even as an aspiring artist, she made it clear that nobody was going to tell her what to look like, sound like, or who to write with, swiftly turning her into a modern-day outlaw.
Her strong-willed nature culminated in a big way on her 2005 Sony debut, Kerosene. With Lambert co-writing all but one of the 12 tracks (and single-handedly penning five), the record introduced Lambert's fiery, no-BS persona through songs like the GRAMMY-nominated title track, "New Strings" and "Me And Charlie Talking." The moment marked a passing of the torch from the likes of Shania Twain and The Chicks — both of whom captivated fans in the '90s with their empowering anthems of womanhood — to Lambert, who began to gain a reputation by listeners and industry heads alike as a free spirit that wasn't to be messed with.
While 2007's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend doubled down on her unabashedly bold image (see "Gunpowder & Lead"), Kerosene's follow-up also hinted that Texas will always be on Lambert's heart. The earnest ballad "Famous In A Small Town" saw her reminiscing on what she left behind at home, a sentiment she revisits on "The House That Built Me," a tear-jerking ode to her childhood home from her third studio set, 2009's Revolution. The latter would go on to become her first No. 1 country hit and first GRAMMY-winning song, proving that she can be equally as impactful with vulnerability as she can with vengeance.
Lambert found a successful balance of both on her next two albums, 2011's Four The Record and 2014's Platinum, as well as her work with Pistol Annies, her trio with Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley launched in 2011. And while 2016's The Weight Of These Wings kicked off with the playful single "Vice," much of the two-disc album offered more poignant balladry as Lambert reflected on her very public divorce from Blake Shelton.
"Every record I've ever made has been a reflection of where I am right then in my life, however old I am," Lambert told Billboard in 2016. "And I've never held back at all. But this time with what I happened to be going through in my life, being honest was never really a choice. Everybody knew anyway. So I just said, I'm gonna journal it, and — good days and bad days — use it for my art."
One of the album's most affecting tunes is the two-time GRAMMY-nominated single "Tin Man," which also ended up being very fortuitous for Lambert thanks to co-writers Jack Ingram and Jon Randall. But before they became her right-hand men, she recruited another new collaborator for her seventh full-length album, 2019's Wildcard: Jay Joyce.
Joyce helped Lambert expand her sound into the rock and pop space more than ever before ("Mess With My Head," "Locomotive"), resulting in a fittingly more upbeat feel for the singer, who found love again with McLoughlin and married in 2019. As her first album without longtime producer Frank Liddell at the helm, it was also an indication that the singer/songwriter was ready to evolve. But Ingram and Randall were the Wildcard collaborators (both co-wrote "Tequila Does"; Randall was also a co-writer on "Pretty Bitchin'") who would ultimately serve as Lambert's guiding light for what was to come.
The trio's collaborative album, 2021's The Marfa Tapes, first brought Lambert back to her Texas roots, written and recorded together in the titular small West Texas town. Utilizing only two microphones and an acoustic guitar, the record was as raw and real as it gets, and took on a distinctly Texas flavor through songs like "Waxahachie," "Amazing Grace (West Texas)" and "Am I Right Or Amarillo" — the last of which features a town that would later pop up again on Postcards' lead track.
The next year, Lambert revisited three of The Marfa Tapes' songs on her eighth solo effort, Palomino ("In His Arms," "Geraldine," "Actin' Up"); the rest of the album's 15 tracks included narratives about living life on the road on your own terms, like "If I Was A Cowboy," which saw Lambert reclaiming her outlaw swagger.
The mix of The Marfa Tapes' acoustic ballads and Palomino's stories from the road coalesce into one on Postcards From Texas. Often pulling from her own journey, Lambert hones in on a Texas-sized sense of place — literally and figuratively — with stories about rogue hitchhikers running from the law ("Armadillo") and high-stakes divorce settlements ("Alimony"), as well as callouts to various cities and state landmarks along the way.
Meanwhile, other songs see the re-emergence of the hard-headed Lambert that fans first met with Kerosene and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Tracks like "Dammit Randy" — a co-write with Randall and McLoughlin — show her walking away from someone in disappointment who's no longer serving her, whereas the fiery "Wranglers" has her fully embracing her younger self, confirming that part of her is here to stay no matter what (because "Wranglers take forever to burn"). It's a side of Lambert that has ebbed and flowed over the course of her career, but throughout Postcards, it's evident that a return to Texas played a big part in reinvigorating her signature sass.
"The woman scorned thing kind of worked for me in my career, so going away from that for too long feels like something's missing in my records and missing in my set and missing in myself," Lambert admitted during a recent interview with TalkShopLive. "When I heard 'Wranglers' I was like 'Oh, there it is. She's back.' [Laughs]."
Collectively, Postcards sees Lambert arguably more inspired than she's ever been — happily in love, with a fresh start at a new label, and back in Texas where her story began. She's proud of where she's been and where she is now, and being back home solidified that.
"I've been making records now for 20 years, so it makes sense to go back to some of the emotions I felt as an artist and as a person through the years and put them in one place," Lambert asserted to TalkShopLive. "I think Postcards From Texas does that."