Even though their marriage didn’t work out, they’ll always have “Over You.”
In 2012, Miranda Lambert released her hit song “Over You,” which was the second single from her album Four the Record. The track peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and Miranda and her ex-husband Blake Shelton won the CMA Award for Song of the Year for their beautifully written song, as well as several other awards.
They’ve had their fair share of negative press when it comes to their relationship, but a couple years ago, Miranda opened up about a beautiful moment they shared together writing a song about the loss of Blake’s late brother, Richie, who passed unexpectedly in a car accident in 1990 when Blake was just a teenager.
Fans know Miranda and Blake went through a very public divorce in 2015, and it was the hot topic in the tabloids for months on end. It didn’t exactly end on great terms, but clearly both are happily remarried now and have moved on from that time in their lives.
She has opened up about it a little bit here and there over the years, and during an appearance on the And the Writer Is… podcast last week, Miranda shared quite a lot about that time and how hard it was to not only go through a divorce, but to do it so publicly.
And she also talked about writing “Over You” with Shelton, saying it was “natural” as they were both two songwriters living together, and she says they wrote a few others together but they were not as meaningful as this one:
“It’s pretty natural. You have two singer songwriters in a house all the time. It’s bound to happen. I don’t know why it took us that long. We had some songs, but we didn’t record them and take them seriously.”
They are both touring musicians, so time together was hard to come by, leaving little time to write together and that’s one of the reasons they didn’t work together much professionally during their marriage:
“We were both very busy touring musicians. It was a lot. It’s two people going two separate ways constantly, so there wasn’t a lot of time to write. Sometimes when you’re off the road, you had four shows, you’re like, ‘The last thing I want to do is pick up my guitar right now. I need a minute.'”
Miranda explained that “Over You” came to fruition during a “late night conversation,” and she remembered being with his family the day his dad passed away, which happened around the same time one of Miranda’s best friend passed away in an accident.
With so much sadness and emotion from those huge losses, the song just poured out of them. Miranda says the song goes beyond them being a married couple romantically, but spoke to their core of who they are as songwriters.
“It was late night conversation about the death of his brother. I was with his family when his dad passed away and I had lost a best friend in an accident all kind of at the same time as this conversation happened…
It was one of those really organic moments, not only between romantically linked people, but two songwriters met that night.”
It fell out organically, and I think that comes through effortlessly in the song.
She called the writing process a “magical” experience because of how vulnerable they were, and that speaks to the heart in the song and why it became such a hit and resonated with so many people, in my humble opinion:
“I remember saying to him, ‘This is kind of your story. Be as vulnerable as you want to. I’ll go there with you if you want to.’ And he did, and so and so did I. I felt that was pretty magical, because it just was two songwriters. All the other stuff fell away. This was two really close friends writing a song that night.”
Miranda and Blake have both very much moved on, as both have remarried, but Miranda will always hold a special place in her heart for “Over You”:
“It’s a very special song to both of us.”
Even though the two of them aren’t on speaking terms and the marriage didn’t end well, it’s beautiful that Miranda can reflect on “Over You” so fondly and still hold it close to her heart:
The full podcast is available below.
