480. Miranda Lambert, "The Weight of These Wings"

 


Another album I really like!  Actually, probably half an album.  This is a double album that probably should have been a single album but far be it for me to tell Miranda Lambert how to run her life.  ANYWAY we're all familiar with breakup songs, of course, but Miranda is out here with a whole fucking breakup ALBUM.  It's really something.  

We all have our breakup songs.  Maybe when you broke up with that guy you were with for two years right after you started your job "The Ecstatics" by Explosions in the Sky was playing and now that song will forever be linked to him and that whole period in your mind.  For me, "Gravity Rides Everything" by Modest Mouse is like that.  But when you're Miranda Lambert and you're breaking up with a guy who's Blake Shelton and then your ex starts dating Gwen Stefani, you don't just have a breakup song, you write your own breakup songs and you write a lot of them.

There's a little bit of everything here, like the truly heartbreaking ballad "Pushin' Time" and the rollicking cheating-on-your-other bar song "Ugly Lights" and the maybe-substance-abuse-is-bad-maybe-not "Vice."  But my personal favorite song on this album is "You Wouldn't Know Me," which was like my third-most listened to song on Spotify in 2018.


It's great, isn't it?  As luck would have it, I think this is the only straight cover on the the record.  It was originally written and recorded by Shake Russell, a Texas singer-songwriter with a great name and a history of writing songs that became semi-huge for other artists.  I can't put my finger on what it is about this song that I love.  It's ineffable, much like life.

This is also a great road trip album.  It's just meant for long car rides.

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