It’s been 12 whole years since Miranda Lambert released her third studio album, Revolution.
The record debuted at #1 on the Billboard U.S. Top Country Albums chart in 2009, and was her third consecutive #1 album after Kerosene in 2005 and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend in 2007. It also won Album of the Year award at the ACMs and at the CMAs in 2010.
While it produced one of her biggest hits and signature songs, “The House That Built Me”, there’s quite a few other tracks on the record that don’t get the credit they deserve.
Aside from her #1 hit “House,” it produced four other fantastic singles in “Dead Flowers,” “White Liar,” “Only Prettier,” and “Heart Like Mine.”
Every last one of those songs is top notch and Miranda at her finest in terms of her songwriting ability, but deep cuts like “Me and Your Cigarettes” and “Love Song” could’ve just as easily been singles, as well. It also features a stellar cover of John Prine’s “That’s the Way That the World Goes ‘Round.”
Miranda wrote or co-wrote all but four out of the 15 songs on the album’s tracklist, and I think that’s pretty apparent when you listen to it from top to bottom. It’s a deeply personal record where she’s open about her struggles with life, love and everything in between.
Not only was this a #1 album for Miranda, but it allowed her to show off more of her softer side after earning a bit of a reputation with previous songs we all know and love like “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Kerosene,” which she has noted before was not done by accident.
If you haven’t listened to this record in a while, today is the perfect day to knock the dust off and give it a spin. I would easily put it at or near the top of my list when it comes to my favorite Miranda albums. To say it’s as quality as they come would be a massive understatement.
It resonates just as deeply now as it did then, but probably even more so for me. I realized in writing this that that she put this project out when she was 25, almost my exact age now and damn it if I don’t understand every single line of every single song. It’s the definition of timeless.
And, if you’ve never heard “Me and Your Cigarettes” before or haven’t listened to it in a while, it will remind you why she’s remained the top female country artist of the last decade or so.
I mean, good Lord, who else is writing stuff like this in mainstream country?
“Me and Your Cigarettes”
“Dead Flowers”
“Heart Like Mine”
“Only Prettier”
