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Miranda Lambert Hung Up On The First (And Last) Interview She Did For ‘The Weight Of These Wings’ – “First Question Was, ‘How Do You Feel About Gwen?'”
A staple in her iconic music catalog.
Miranda Lambert released her incredible 2016 “divorce album” The Weight of These Wings on this date nearly ten years ago… way before the double album trend really started in country music.
Of course, her sixth studio album was instantly labeled a “divorce album” when it was announced, because it immediately followed her extremely public divorce from Blake Shelton in 2015. And you’d be hard pressed to find any sort of press or media with Miranda even talking about the record at the time, and there’s a good reason for it.
Immediately upon the release of an album, most artists do a media circuit full of interviews, podcasts, tours, and more to promote the project they’ve just put out. And that started out no differently for Miranda…
Unfortunately, though, she quickly found out that, because everyone was so invested in her divorce from Blake and all the nitty gritty details, they were less interested in actually talking about the music itself. I don’t know what else she really expected, because that whole saga was a media firestorm and was headline news pretty much daily for months, but obviously, she was in a very fragile place on the heels of the release.
In fact, she didn’t even get through one minute of the very first phone interview, which she recalled in an interview a couple years later in 2018:
“When the music was out, people had listened, I got on the phone for the first interview. First question was, ‘How do you feel about Gwen?’ I hung up. I told Marion [her manager], I just can’t do this.”
Moreover, she had gotten to a point after writing and recording the whole thing that she found closure in knowing that it was out there for the public to hear, and people could listen to the record if they wanted to know how she felt about everything.
I mean, that’s kinda the point of making a divorce album:
“It was going to be hell, and I’d already been through hell. It was hell putting it on paper, putting my words on paper. So I didn’t want to rehash.
I’d finally gotten to a place where I wasn’t sad anymore. All the sad moments were there, all the truths were right in those songs. All you had to do was listen. I didn’t need to say anything.”
It’s understandably that the media wanted to ask her those questions, and it’s also understandable that Miranda didn’t want to answer them, and I still don’t blame her for making the decision not to do a frenzy of press in this particular case.
She added that she felt a lot of her comments would’ve been taken out of context, which is probably very true and a good call on her part:
“But it wouldn’t have been that. It would’ve been taken out of context. It would’ve set up some expectation that couldn’t be met. I was very publicly going through this thing, and there wasn’t an explanation to be given.
What was in the music was real, and I wanted people to get it from that. Take from it what they would. Then if I needed to talk, I would. But I haven’t really. Until now.”
The two records were appropriately labeled The Nerve and The Heart, dive deep into her feelings about not only her divorce, but life at the time and everything else she had going on while trying to come to the realization that her marriage simply didn’t work out.
It’s one of the most brilliant country records of the last 15 years, and seven years later, it remains timeless with tales about love, loss and everything in between.
Few “divorce albums” (or double albums, for that matter) end up being what we all hope they will be, because most artists end up holding back and leaving important things out for fear of revealing too much. Or, they included songs that would typically be left on the cutting room floor just for the sake of calling the project a double album, sacrificing the overall quality.
Miranda certainly did not have that problem here, and that alone allowed this record to reach its full, unbridled potential.
The Weight of These Wings debuted at #1 on the U.S. Billboard Country Albums chart, and also won Album of the Year at the 2017 ACM Awards, which was Lambert’s fifth consecutive album to win the award, a record for any artist.
From songs like “Vice” and “Tin Man,” to more upbeat tunes like “Pink Sunglasses” and “We Should Be Friends,” there are no skips… it’s pure and simple country perfection and an album that will go down as a career-defining moment for one of country music’s modern superstars.
“Vice”
“Tin Man”
“Runnin’ Just in Case”
“Use My Heart”
The post Miranda Lambert Hung Up On The First (And Last) Interview She Did For ‘The Weight Of These Wings’ – “First Question Was, ‘How Do You Feel About Gwen?'” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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