Miranda Lambert Was Going to Walk Away From Her 1st Big Record Deal if They Didn’t Let Her Do What She Wanted
While country star Miranda Lambert has been making music professionally since 2001, she got her big break in 2005 with her studio album Kerosene. This album marked Lambert’s major label debut. In a 2011 interview with Texas Monthly, it was revealed that Lambert almost walked away from this record deal.
Miranda Lambert nearly walked away from her first record deal
Lambert released her first album, Miranda Lambert, independently in 2001. In 2003, she competed on the reality TV show Nashville Star.
Her talent on Nashville Star led to Lambert being offered a record deal. However, Lambert almost made the decision not to sign on with the label.
Lambert’s decision was recounted in a 2011 interview with Texas Monthly.
“We walked into a room filled with about twenty people,” Lambert’s agent Joey Lee told Texas Monthly, “and they started going through their thing, saying, ‘We need you to write with this person and work with this producer so that we can produce a great record.’”
Lee continued, “And Miranda basically stopped everyone in their tracks and said, ‘Have y’all listened to my songs? Because that’s who I am and that’s what I’m going to keep doing, and if I can’t do it my way, I’ll go home and come back when you’re ready for me.’ She was eighteen years old and walking away from a major record deal. And right then, to his credit, the president of the label said, ‘Okay, Miranda, go make your record.'”
Miranda Lambert received bad career advice
Nearly turning her back on a record deal was not a one-off situation in Lambert’s career. In a 2014 interview with Marie Claire, Lambert revealed that she received bad advice from someone and decided not to follow it.
“Early on, an artist told me, ‘Don’t be yourself. Perform and be someone else,’” the singer said. “And I thought, That seems like exactly the opposite of what I should be doing.”
She continued, “Then I had people wanting me to adjust my lyrics to be more appealing to the masses or whatever. I said, ‘No, that’s bulls***.’ I’d rather sell four copies of something that’s real than 4 million copies of something that’s fake.”
The singer makes an effort to write her ‘own’ songs
Elaborating in the interview with Marie Claire, Lambert emphasized that she feels creating her “own” music to perform is important to her.
“I went to Nashville and tried to sing someone else’s songs and couldn’t,” Lambert told Marie Claire. “Even at that age, I was like, I can’t sell something that I don’t believe.”
She continued, “So I started writing my own stuff. I figure, if I’m feeling something, surely to God, other people are, too, but they don’t want to say it because it’s too embarrassing.”
