Revolution

Miranda Lambert was one of country music's most exciting 21st-century upstarts, crash-landing into the consciousness when she placed third on the country-idol competition Nashville Star in 2003. Her first two albums turned heads for her straight-shooting songs about life as an outlaw of womanhood. On Revolution, her third, she established herself as an artistic force, leaning into rock-influenced sounds as she continued to express her singular point of view on thrashing country-rockers and lacerating ballads alike.

Revolution opens with "White Liar", a stomping rocker that combines its soaring chorus with fingerpicked guitars and a bridge that gives Lambert's lyrical task-taking a twist. Other tracks, like the chiming "Me and Your Cigarettes", which has a power-pop snap, and the anthemic "Heart Like Mine", which juxtaposes fantasies of drinking wine alongside Jesus with a grimy guitar solo, double down on Lambert's wild-woman status amid more rock-leaning arrangements. Lambert's cover of folk hero John Prine's 1976 lament "That's The Way That the World Goes ’Round", meanwhile, adds a pop-punk bounce to its head-shaking chorus, turning it into a 21st-century eye-roll that's capped off by a frenetic banjo solo.

But it’s Revolution’s most bruised moments that reveal Lambert’s growth as a songwriter and singer. Lambert's vocal on the slow-burning elegy "Dead Flowers" is astonishing, adding woe to her descriptions of the mundane cruelty that transpires as two people drift apart. And the crystalline "The House That Built Me" peels back Lambert's tough-girl persona in a search for healing that takes her back home. Revolution reveals the deep emotional roots of Lambert’s renegade image in surprising and heart-rending ways, combining musical innovation and songwriting classicism in a way that she’d ride to country’s upper echelons over the next decade. In 2024, to mark the album's 15th anniversary, Lambert looked back at the stories behind some of the key songs on her career-changing album.

“Only Prettier”
“‘Only Prettier’ was the first song I ever wrote with Natalie Hemby. She brought the idea in, and I loved the attitude behind it. We wrote four songs in two hours that day. I love that the song starts off in a laid-back way, and then takes off and never looks back.”

“House that Built Me”
“When I heard this song for the first time, I cried for two hours. When a song hits you like that, you know it’s going to hit other people, too. For the past 15 years, there’s always been at least one person at every show that you can tell also deeply feels the emotion of the song. When I first recorded it, I thought that was because it was everybody’s story—that everyone has that house, or those people, that they think of. But one day, one of my long-time band members Scotty Wray, who we sadly lost in 2022, said to me, ‘I wish I’d had a house that built me.’ I’d never thought about it that way, but it made me realize that every person in the room either has those memories, or wishes that they had those memories. The song was written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, and is one of those songs that falls under the category of, ‘Dang why didn’t I think of that?!’ It’s a very special song.“

”Heart Like Mine“
”I wrote ‘Heart Like Mine’ with my Pistol Annies bandmate and friend Ashley Monroe, as well as Travis Howard. Ashley and I had gone up to Pigeon Forge and spent a few days in a cabin to hang out and write. We started the song on that trip, and then finished it later in Texas with Travis. It’s my interpretation of what comes after.”

“Dead Flowers”
“I’ve tried to include at least one solo-write on most of my albums. Revolution had three on it, and ‘Dead Flowers’ was one of them. I’d had a bouquet of roses that had withered, and needed to be thrown away. I just threw them out in the yard. I also used to keep my Christmas lights up all the time, and so I looked out in the yard with the falling down Christmas lights, and the dead flowers, and that inspired the song. I wrote it in 20 minutes.”

“White Liar”
“I had hoped this song would become a single when I recorded it. It ended up being the second single off the album, after ‘Dead Flowers,’ and became my first number one. We threw a 1940s themed black and white party in Nashville to celebrate. It was epic.”

“That’s the Way that the World Goes Round”
“I was nervous to record this song, because I have the utmost respect for John Prine and I wanted to do the song justice. The way we recorded it ended up being a little bit Miranda, a little bit country, and a little bit punk. It sounded like we were having a party when we cut it, and believe me we were.”

“Virginia Bluebell”
“This song also was Natalie Hemby’s idea. I didn’t really know what a Virginia Bluebell was at the time, but it’s a little flower that hangs down like a bell and sort of droops. It’s beautiful. This song was such a different song for me at the time—I’d never heard anything like it, and never would have thought to write it. I love that the dead flowers come back around as Virginia Bluebells on the album.”