Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert

Country songwriter Miranda Lambert was born November 10, 1983, in Lindale, TX, a small town about 80 miles east of Dallas. The daughter of country guitarist Rick Lambert (her mother, Bev, ran a detective agency), she grew up in a house dedicated to country music and began entering country talent contests when she was 16, including an appearance with the Johnny High Country Music Review in Arlington, TX. Lambert learned to play guitar and immediately began writing her own songs while continuing to enter talent contests, one of which earned her an appearance in a potato chip advertisement and the 2001 teen comedy Slap Her She's French. At 17 years old, she formed the Texas Pride Band and began gigging professionally, and later in 2001, with financial help from her father, she released an independent CD, Miranda Lambert, that showcased her songs. Two of the album's tracks, "Texas Pride" and "Somebody Else," even entered the Texas music charts.

In 2003, Lambert finished first in the Texas auditions for the Nashville Star television show. She moved to Nashville in order to appear on the show and eventually finished third in the competition, which led to a recording contract with Sony. Still only 21 years old, she released her first major-label single, "Me and Charlie Talking," in 2004. The consequent album, Kerosene -- for which Lambert wrote or co-wrote ten of the 11 tracks -- appeared in 2005 on Epic Records and went platinum, scoring several high-charting country singles. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend experienced similar success upon its release in 2007; moreover, it established Lambert as one of country's newest "bad girls," a designation that nodded to the fiery temperament of her music. Lambert's songs spun tales of cheating boyfriends and domestic abuse, and they almost always ended with the singer extracting violent, spectacular revenge on her aggressors. For 2009's Revolution, however, she branched out into other subjects, drawing upon a happy (and highly publicized) relationship with fellow country star Blake Shelton while writing songs about love, regret, and childhood. Steve Leggett