The best song on Postcards From Texas, in my very humble opinion.
Miranda Lambert just released her honky tonkin’ album last Friday, and it’s easily my favorite project she’s released in a long time. The easy standout from the first listen for me was a song called “Run,” which was the only song Miranda wrote completely on her own.
She really wears her heart on her sleeve, admitting that she was always going to leave the relationship, and while her man should’ve realized she was unhappy sooner, it ultimately wouldn’t have mattered:
“Well, it wasn’t that you didn’t have the answers
There was just no question in my mind
I was gonna run
And you took too long to see I was unhappy
And I took too long to tell you that I was gonna run
I was gonna run”
And in a previous interview with Kelliegh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio, Miranda admitted that she actually wrote “Run” a decade ago, though she could never bring herself to record it because she knew she’d have to sing it live:
“I wasn’t ever ready to perform it until now. That’s what songs are for, and you may not be ready at that one time to sing about something really raw or sing about alimony. You might be going through a divorce or whatever.
At the time it might not be funny or at the time it might feel too raw, but then it can come back around.”
While the timeline obviously lines up to around the time she got divorced from fellow country star Blake Shelton (they announced divorce in July of 2015), Miranda played it coy in terms of whether the song was written about their relationship or not.
In a recent interview with Variety, she explained that it was her current husband Brendan McLoughlin who encouraged her to finally cut it for Postcards, though when interviewer Chris Willman asked explicitly if it was about Shelton, Miranda skated around the answer (totally her prerogative), saying she “just wasn’t ready” to cut it yet.
While I have my own opinions about who it’s about, that ultimately doesn’t really matter or add or takeaway from the striking beauty of the song:
“You know, I just wasn’t ready to cut this song yet. I haven’t done it on every record, but on most records I’ve tried to cut a song that I wrote by myself. Co-writing is so much more fun, obviously, and it’s just such a way we do it.
But I just really felt like I need to constantly try to at least write by myself a little bit. It’s sometimes not as fun and it’s hard. And when you cut a song that’s vulnerable like that, you can’t blame it on your co-writers and say, ‘Well, that wasn’t my story.’
Jon Randall was also like, ‘We’ve gotta cut this song,’ and I appreciated those two especially, but a lot of people in my inner, inner circle have heard that song for years in a work tape and now were like, ‘This record feels like it would be a good home for it.'”
She said it was Brendan, as well as her friend and co-producer Jon Randall, who really pushed her to cut it, and she’s glad they did… though Miranda said it’s a very vulnerable place to be, but she promised to always tell the truth in her music and that’s what she’s still doing over two decades later:
“So I appreciated the nudge. Because I’ve done those kind of songs my whole career, but they aren’t ever a very comfortable place to be… You know, there was a lot of that on ‘The Weight of These Wings.’
There was some of that in my early, early stuff that I wrote at 18, when you’re really raw, figuring it out. So, I just think those are the kinds of songs that I signed up to do. I promised to tell the truth when I started this journey, and that’s what I’m doing.”
The song is so simple, yet emotional and meaningful, and it stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it. The production is perfect, and Miranda seems to have a knack for capturing wistful, forlorn feelings in such a relatable, heartfelt way and this is definitely one of her best yet.
If you like sad country songs that cut straight to the heart, this is for you. I can’t get enough, do yourself a favor and check it out:
“Run”
