Miranda Lambert

Biography

In 2003, Lambert successfully auditioned for Nashville Star, a reality TV series modeled after the American Idol format. She decamped 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, with the full-length Kerosene following in 2005. Lambert wrote or co-wrote ten of the album's 11 tracks, several of which became popular singles on country radio, and Kerosene eventually went platinum.

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 award-winning 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. Like the two albums before it, Revolution went platinum. Lambert wrote or co-wrote six of the 14 tracks on her next outing, Four the Record, which appeared in the fall of 2011. ~ Steve Leggett & Andrew Leahey, Rovi