Miranda Lambert Says Writing Songs is Her Version of Journaling — ‘The Snapshot of Where I Was as a Human’
Singer-songwriter Miranda Lambert is currently putting on her Las Vegas residency Miranda Lambert: Velvet Rodeo The Las Vegas Residency. In the country music industry, Lambert is known for being authentic with her music and songwriting. During an interview with Vulture, Lambert referred to songwriting as her own version of journaling.
Miranda Lambert calls her music ‘my journal’
In the interview with Vulture, Lambert recounted a story about her and her husband Brendan McLoughlin. While telling the story, Lambert revealed that she views writing music as her version of keeping a personal journal.
“I was listening to Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey’s book, on our road trip in our Airstream, me and my husband. He was saying some pretty brilliant things about how he journaled everything and now he has all this to write a book. My husband’s like, ‘Do you ever journal?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s my records. That is my journal,'” Lambert said.
She added, “I was 18 when I wrote Kerosene. That whole record was the snapshot of where I was as a human. I consider all of these records and songs as documenting my life.”
The most difficult song Miranda Lambert ever wrote
When asked by Vulture about her most difficult songwriting experience, Lambert admitted the song “They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks” was one that came to mind.
“Anything written by yourself is not as fun as drinking with a bunch of friends and writing songs, because it’s all you. There is nobody to blame it on. There’s nowhere to run. What song going down was pretty hurtful that I can think of recently was ‘They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks,'” Lambert told Vulture.
The song “They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks” originally appeared in the documentary The Marfa Tapes Film, which shows how Lambert, Jack Ingram, and Jon Randall made the album The Marfa Tapes.
“They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks” is also available as a single on streaming platforms like Spotify.
How the singer made ‘They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks’
Speaking with Vulture, Lambert explained that she wrote “They’ve Closed Down the Honky Tonks’ when quarantine began at the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
“I haven’t recorded it. I just put out an acoustic version of it. I was writing it in the middle of the lockdown. I cleaned off my tour bus. That was the only other time I’ve ever cleaned off my tour bus besides today. It was very real. So writing that song, I was thinking of all my friends. It was just a reality I never thought I would be living in,” the country singer said.
She continued, “It wasn’t about heartbreak from a man or my fiery stuff. It was like, I don’t have a gig anymore. There’s no music. This is crazy. In what world would you ever dream that up? I think it made all of us appreciate what we do so much more, because we all get burnt out and we’ve been doing it forever. I really think that one was one of the hardest to write, because I was feeling every line of it as it was going down.”
