Miranda Lambert has a brand new single at country radio.
“Strange,” from Miranda’s recently released 8th studio album Palomino, was written by Miranda along with her friends and frequent collaborators Luke Dick and Natalie Nicole Hemby (the trio that also wrote her #1 hit “Bluebird”).
And they recently sat down with Billboard to talk about the process of writing the song and how it stemmed from frustrations regarding the COVID pandemic. They penned the track out at Miranda’s Tennessee farm during the lockdowns, but put it on pause after they got stuck and scrapped it after they couldn’t quite nail down the details.
Eventually, after some of the restrictions were lifted, they decided to revisit it at a different writing session, where it took a bit of a brighter, more upbeat turn.
Miranda says she wanted the chorus to be an anthemic release of the frustrations we all felt during COVID:
“The chorus, we wanted it to lift and sort of be an anthem, and not creepy in any way. Just like, ‘Have fun, get a drink, get out of here, go on vacation’ — whatever you got to do to stay sane through all this weirdness.
I wanted it to be an anthem uniting people. The pandemic definitely was the strangest thing we’ve all been through, but that’s just a piece of it.”
Co-writer Natalie Hemby added that, while it’s certainly fun to listen and jam out to, they were able to strike a good balance between voicing their true feelings without getting too preachy:
“It’s fun to sing, and it’s very easy to play. I just love the song. But also, I just feel like it voices everyone’s frustrations without sounding preachy.”
Miranda explained that they were able to have substance in the song, but allowed it so be a sort of singalong, windows-down type of track at the same time:
“It’s like one of those singalongs that’s not shallow.
Some songs are fun and light and don’t have to say much, and some have a little more meat to them.”
“Strange” impacted radio on June 27th, and has had a slow start in terms of radio adds, debuting at #60 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart last Monday:
To be honest, I was really hoping “Carousel” or “Waxahachie” would be selected as singles at some point, because they’re the easy standouts to me, and I absolutely love them.
And though it’s hard to argue that “Carousel” isn’t the most compelling song on the album, we all know that doesn’t translate to success on the radio, but maybe (hopefully) on the next go around, we’ll get to hear one of them.
We’ll just have to wait and see how this one resonates with listeners as it starts to climb the charts over the next few months.
“Strange”
