Miranda Lambert is one of the biggest country music stars of her generation, racking up album sales and accolades, including becoming the most-decorated artist in the history of the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards. During a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, she had a chance to reflect on her musical journey and how it began, explaining that she did things “old school.”
“I was stapling my posters to a phone pole when I started. I did it old school, boots on the ground walking up to the radio station, knocking on the door saying, ‘Can I play a song?’” Lambert recalled of how she started her career when she was a teenager. “Have you ever seen Loretta Lynn’s life story? Have you ever seen Coal Miner’s Daughter? That. Like me and my mom with a bologna sandwich in my mom’s Ford Expedition, like driving around all over Texas. Me going, ‘I’m a singer/songwriter.’”
Over the past several years, social media has become a more important tool for artists than ever, helping many young acts get discovered and launch their music careers, with several finding major success. It’s a much different path than previous generations of artists had to take to get their music heard, and Lambert said that while she’s “thankful” for the work she put in to start her own career, she is jealous of the way that people can do it now.”
“I’m thankful for that, but I’m also like, ‘Well damn.’ These kids just post something, and 100 million people see it in a night,” she said. “What’s happening?”
Miranda Lambert and Joe Rogan continued by discussing the ramifications of becoming suddenly successful without the proper preparation, both with your craft and figuring out who you are as a person and artist.
“You do the journey in reverse,” Lambert explained. “It’s so mind-boggling, like I can’t even put it into words, because I’m thinking how you get your chops, and you did it fight by fight. You did it stage by stage when doing comedy. It just happened so fast, and it’s like, and then you still have to pay the dues, it’s just like backwards.”
It’s not all bad — the 41-year-old Texas native admitted that TikTok does have its usefulness, as her record label, Big Loud Texas, has discovered artists through the platform.
“I was like, maybe I need TikTok. There’s a lot of music on TikTok. There’s a lot of musicians, and we have a label now called Big Loud Texas. Our office is in Austin. And I’m like, I know there’s amazing talent on there. And one of our flagship artists, Dylan Gossett, posted something awesome on there, and now he’s out there crushing it. So I feel like I’m missing out. But then I’m like, do I need one more thing? I don’t know.”
Though she’s still deciding how she feels about the app, the “If I Was A Cowboy” singer did have some positive words to share. “I’m thankful for it too, by the way,” she said. “I found some great talent and learned some really cool recipes and get to talk about rescue dogs. There’s the good things about it.”
During her conversation with Rogan, Lambert also discussed her latest single, “A Song To Sing,” featuring Chris Stapleton, along with her album Postcards From Texas. She touched on Pistol Annies’ Hell of a Holiday, her New York Times bestselling cookbook Y’all Eat Yet? Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin’ Kitchen, as well as her lifestyle ventures — the Idyllwind clothing line, Red 55 Wine, and her animal foundation, MuttNation.
