Miranda Lambert Ends '07 with Bang

Miranda Lambert photo courtesy of frontpagepublicity.com.

January 4, 2008 — Everything came together for Miranda Lambert in 2007, and she ended the year with a Grammy nomination and prominent positions on lots of best-of-the-year lists.

The Washington Post named Miranda's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend the Album of the Year for 2007 in all genres, while USA Today's Brian Mansfield said it was his second favorite (behind Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss). Time and Entertainment Weekly magazines included Miranda in their Top 10 Albums lists, and she made Rolling Stone's Best 50 Albums list, as well as its list of the year's Top 100 songs for the CD's title song.

Earlier this year, Miranda talked to The Tennessean about early influences on her music and what she hoped to achieve someday. "A career I would like to emulate would be Dolly Parton's," she said. "She is an actress, writer and musician and a great singer. I think she is a quadruple threat and she has it all. Over the years, she has evolved to where she's still cool to somebody my age — she's really a great artist — but she's stayed true to the Dolly that came out with the first song. I've never heard anyone say anything negative about her."

Miranda said she had taken to heart something Willie Nelson once said. "He said he tried to look every one of his fans in the eye. I've always tried to remember that. It's not easy to do. Sometimes the crowd is really not into it."

Perhaps the biggest influence on Miranda was Martina McBride. "When I was a teenager, I went to a concert at Texas Stadium with my mom," she said. "We were on the very last row up in the stadium, and most of the performers seemed really small. Then Martina McBride got onstage, and even though she was so tiny she took up the entire stage with her presence. My mom elbowed me and said, 'You need to be big onstage like that.' Now, when people come to my show, I don't want them to leave thinking, 'Well, that was all right.' I want them to think, 'She was having a great time up there.'"