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Legend has it, she hung up on the first interviewer she spoke to about the record-the question was about Shelton’s new partner, Gwen Stefani-and decided that she would do no press surrounding the album, letting the music speak for itself.
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For Lambert, redemption comes from buying a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, by spending late nights alone at the bar, in knowing that she alone controls her destiny. Its songs are torch ballads and highway anthems with a live band that feels borne of late night jam sessions, raw and unglamorous. Her ambitious double album The Weight of These Wings carries on in a grand tradition of messy relationship statements: It has the grit of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers and the uncertainty of Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, wrapped up in Lambert’s fiery, down-home charm. But when they divorced in 2015, the breakup encouraged her to go down a darker, more existential path. Miranda Lambert: The Weight of These Wings (2016)įor the first half of the decade, Miranda Lambert was a country superstar with a string of radio hits, a recurring spot on The Voice, and a picture-perfect marriage to fellow singer Blake Shelton. Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Apple Music | Tidalġ89. It's music that rewards close attention in an age where that is increasingly rare. The wistfulness is often self-referential, as on “Snowed In at Wheeler Street,” a tale of star-crossed lovers with lyrics threaded with references to her old songs.
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The material is more wistful: Where Bush’s best singles have often been about having something beautiful that you’re about to lose, much of 50 Words for Snow addresses things that are already lost.
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50 Words for Snow, named for the myth that the Inuit have such a vocabulary, boasts all of her trademark magical realism, fantastical lovers, and far-flung settings, but the songs are more quietly ambitious than past works-almost like chamber pieces. And she does so wide-eyed and full-heartedly, even painstakingly. On Kate Bush’s only studio album of the decade, she sings about catching a snowflake out of the sky, warning a hunted yeti, and sleeping with a dissolving snowman.
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