Of all of the women currently on top of the country music charts, it seems Miranda Lambert’s been really living a country song – and not one of the happy ones. She went through a tough, emotional divorce from her husband of four years, Blake Shelton, in 2015. The 33-year-old singer strikes me as someone who definitely wears her heart on her sleeve, getting emotional and crying on stage during a performance back in August of last year. So, then, it’s probably no surprise that she turns to the bottle at times for a little “self-medication.” She DID have a recent hit song called “Vice” you know.
Miranda recently told Sounds Like Nashville that her assistant keeps a little “medicine” around for her, stating “My assistant packs — I call it my nanny bag — she packs a bag of liquor for emergencies, for meltdowns and things like that.” One very recent “emergency” came up on Thursday, when Miranda’s flight to Las Vegas for the ACM Awards ceremony was cancelled, forcing Miranda and her crew to rent a van and road trip it to Sin City. Miranda handled it like a champ, telling SoN, “I’m like okay, we’re good, I’m golden. We just need a cooler of ice and we’re going. It was fun.” She posted a pic of her makeshift bar on Instagram with a caption that read, in part, “Y’all…. @ACMawards 75 or bust! Storms diverted our plane to Laughlin Nevada. So… Rent a car set up the bar!! Vegas here we come.”
Miranda is no stranger to the bottle, confessing that her song “Ugly Lights” was written because of her reliance on booze. When introducing the song at a concert in January, she told the audience, “I got divorced so I started drinking a little extra. I found myself in Midtown in Nashville three nights in a row at like last call and with the lights coming on, and I’d be sitting there. So I wrote a song about it.”
“Ugly Lights” is just one of the songs that Miranda wrote for her latest double album, The Weight of These Wings, to help her cope with the split. In an Instagram post from December, she shared her thoughts about using the album as her statement on the divorce, explaining, “I feel really strongly about the only talking I needed to do, I’ve done and it’s on tape. All the parts of me, the parts of the pain I went through, everything that happens to a person in their life — especially in the last couple years for me — is on this record.”
The record not only serves as a source of catharsis for Miranda, it also helped her rack up some awards at Sunday night’s ACM Awards. Miranda was up for five awards and won two. The Weight of These Wings took Album of the Year honors and Miranda won her record eighth Female Vocalist of the Year Award – the most won by any female artist in the awards’ history. Upon winning Album of the Year, Miranda thanked her fans in a short but sweet acceptance speech “for letting me use my heartbreak and sharing it with me.”
Female Vocalist of the Year at the #ACMs goes to @mirandalambert! ✨ Congratulations! pic.twitter.com/2FFJ8OVbgD
— ACM Awards (@ACMawards) April 3, 2017
Later, in the press room, Miranda added,
I’m so thankful because I really used my stories and it’s basically like my diary won album of the year. To me, country music is about truth, about what’s really going on, whether it’s happy or sad or somewhere in the middle. For me in the past couple of years, it’s been more sad than happy, but it’s moving to another direction. I’m really glad people can relate to an emotion like that.
I am hardly the one to say anything about how one deals with sadness and stress, but, to quote Homer Simpson, alcohol is “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” I get that Miranda has that hard living, country singer persona, but maybe she can deal with things in a healthier way. She looks really happy with her beau Anderson East – I have to agree with Kaiser that her ACM red carpet look was gorgeous. You’ve got a lot going for you girl, ease up on the hooch and you could be even happier. Geez, I sounded like my mom just then.
Photos: Getty Images, WENN.com
I had a”Slut Bag” in my trunk back in the day.. didnt function like that though
That said as a Person living in Ya’ll MAGA world I do report Im living off of weed/wine/work outs myself
Ha. MAGA world has given me a new appreciation for chips, cookies and pretty much anything nutrient free. But still working out, it really does help with stress.
She needs to get help! Support group – meds – counseling.
Jesus – Intervention – Buddhist Retreat!!!!
I like her, Weight of these Wings was a great record (and to be super petty, way better than the garbage Blake put out). I hope she cleans it up a bit, though. She’s always been a bit rough around the edges, if her songs are any reflection of her personality, that is. But mid thirties and shutting down the bar all the time is not a good look.
Where was Blake?
He wasn’t nominated, so he was in Tishomingo getting ready for the big press conference about the Ole Red groundbreaking. Or whatever they’re calling it since the building is already built.
There were stores in the building he bought next to the Pink Pistol and he threw out one of his best friends with 30 days notice. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
I know they keep saying it’ll make a bunch of jobs in Tish, but a lot of us figure he’ll bring in people from outside to run the place.
I’m not a fan, in case you can’t tell.
I used to like Blake. Like circa “Some Beach”. But at the end of the day – I like her so much better. I love her rough around the edges, faster songs. Her more emotional ones are really good – I just can’t handle listening to anything too sad, haha.
I had watched the Voice early on for a bit – and that’s about the time when I really started being grossed out by him. He’s a real sketch ball. He can be amusing sometimes, but I really don’t think he’s a great person.
I like her music better. But I can’t listen to full albums of any country music album, just the group of songs I like. Country music isn’t my thing.
She has always said she is moody, “not sunshine and roses,” and goes to dark places emotionally. She credited Blake for being exactly who he seems, a very happy person, and that because of his personality he could pull her out of her darkness at times.
I don’t think either one is a bad person and really loved each other. They had two huge careers that got bigger and bigger and probably after a while was the beginning of the end for them because of the age-old reason, not enough time together.
I like her a lot. She’s very honest. If she drinks as much as she says, she seems to be in the “highly functioning” category. It’s easy to think you don’t have a problem, but if you’ve got to have a bag of booze in the event something goes wrong…the people around her should definitely be on alert.
How do people drink alcohol without gaining weight? I walk by a drink and gain weight. I had to give up beer about 5 years ago because it appeared on my belly instantly. Now I’ve mostly given up red wine too- and I’m not happy about it. Plus my face looks puffy the next day if I drink. Not quite Steve Bannon levels of drunk bloat, but still…
I think they don’t eat. My step mother in law drinks like a fish, mostly red wine although she used to drink glasses of Baileys and CREAM (gross) before bed, and she’s tiny. She subsists on diet Pepsi during the day and one small meal at dinner. It’s awful.
In the past when I would comfort drink, it was in place of food. Like, I turned to food or wine rather than both.
Her music is so much better than Blake’s, definitely my car jam. I think the drinking is part of her schtick and makes her “relatable”. I also think she someone who drinks more than when she’s down then up. I’ve a feeling that she wouldn’t be talking about her drinking if she was still drinking as much.
I’m sorry, but I will criticize the way she’s dealing with her stress. She’s got a problem. If you can’t even deal with a cancelled flight without booze, you have a problem.
Dependency on alcohol is never OK. My father did this, still does, and he’s not OK because he has no clue how to deal with life’s problems unless he’s drunk. Don’t self medicate, ever.
That is an impossibly high standard, and likely being used by many as their excuse to drink. Counseling to achieve compassion perhaps?
She’s always been a drinker, likes drinking, and talks about So I can believe she upped it when the stress of divorce hit.
The crying on stage wasn’t about her life. It was explained it was because of this. Who wouldn’t cry?
A soldier was in the audience and was holding up this sign.
“3 combat tours. Your voice was the last thing I listened to EVERY NIGHT! THANK YOU!!!”
I am obsessed with that dress!! I’m looking for a cool non traditional but still pretty wedding dress and WOW! I wonder how much it costs…
ETA: oh totally affordable only $12K LE SIGH
She seemed like such a good match for Blake, better than Gwen anyway. Not a fan of either, but I wonder what went wrong? Cheating? Egos?