There’s absolutely nothing that hurts as good as a stone cold country heartbreak song.
And if there’s any modern artist who knows that all too well, it’s Miranda Lambert.
She recently released the first sad, wistful track off her forthcoming collaborative album The Marfa Tapes called “In His Arms.” And in true Miranda fashion, I’m sure there will be plenty more where that came from once the record is released in its entirety.
She’s never been a stranger to the intricacies of heartache, and back on her sophomore studio album from 2007, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, she covered the great Emmylou Harris’ “Easy From Now On.”
The song, written by Susanna Clark and Carlene Carter, was on Harris’ 1978 album, Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town, and peaked at #12 on the billboard charts that year when it was released as a single.
It’s one of the many ways Miranda has paid her respects to those who came before her, and it’s just captivatingly good. And let’s be honest, covering Emmylou is no easy task. Miranda herself was so inspired by the song, in fact, she revealed to Billboard last year that the tattoo on her arm of a wildcard (and her subsequent album title) were inspired by a particular line from it:
“One of my favorite lines is, ‘When the mornin’ comes and it’s time for me to leave/Don’t worry about me, I got a wild card up my sleeve,’ and it’s always resonated with me.
I got the tattoo before we wrote “Bluebird,” obviously, to remind myself be queen of your own heart and you know you can pull something out if you need to get out of the situation.”
But regardless of where you are in life or what’s going on in your heart, even during happy times, she stresses:
“No matter what, I always go in a dark room and drink a cold beer and sing a sad song because I love it.”
She gets it…
Miranda’s live version:
The Emmylou original:
