One of my favorite days in country music history.
On this date in 2005, Miranda Lambert was topping the country music charts with her major label debut studio album Kerosene.
Miranda had put out one self-titled record independently around the time she competed in Nashville Star in 2003 (coming in third), and went on to sign with Epic Nashville in 2004 not too long after that.
Kerosene peaked at #1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, #18 on the Billboard 200 chart, and spawned four radio singles in “Me And Charlie Talkin’,” “Bring Me Down,” “New Strings,” and of course the most popular in the albums title track.
None of them charted super high, except “Kerosene,” which peaked at #15 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and has since been certified Platinum by the RIAA and is still a fan-favorite to this day.
And speaking of that song, even though it wasn’t a #1 hit, it did play a huge role in launching Miranda’s larger career, putting her on the radar of country music fans everywhere after a kickass performance of it at the 2005 CMA Awards.
She came out absolutely guns blazing and lit the stage on fire (pun very much intended), jumping around with some incredible pyro behind her and putting it all out there in terms of who she was as an artist from the get-go. As a result, she completely shook up the industry at a time when there really weren’t a whole out woman at the forefront of the genre.
And honestly, it took a lot of guts for her to get up on that stage and sing a song about lighting her ex’s shit on fire and threatening to kill him as her official introduction to the genre in front of all of her peers and the genres most prolific stars.
When you watch this video back now, it’s easy to see how badly the industry needed someone like her and why she resonated so deeply with so many people, especially young women.
And though Kerosene as an album tends to get lost in the shuffle of Miranda’s impressive and solid catalog at times, because she has so many great records, it’s easy to understand how she became a star coming out of the gate absolutely swinging with a helluva debut like this.
Check out the CMA performance if you haven’t seen it before, it’s still one of my favorites:
“Me and Charlie Talking”
“New Strings”
“What About Georgia?”
