Miranda Lambert definitely has a fiery side, but she also has a sweet and gentle side. The Texan has been known to wear her heart on her sleeve in several of the songs she has released over the last 20 years.
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We picked four of our favorite songs that show off Lambert's sentimental side.
1. "The House That Built Me"
Lambert didn't write "The House That Built Me," but she might as well have. The song, penned by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, says in part, "I thought if I could touch this place or feel it / This brokenness inside me might start healing / Out here, it's like I'm someone else / I thought that maybe I could find myself."
Ironically, the song was actually pitched to her then-husband, Blake Shelton, first. But as soon as Lambert heard it, she began weeping.
"It was beautiful," Lambert recalls on the Today Show. "I mean, I just started bawling from the second I heard it. He was like, 'If you have a reaction to this song like that, then you need to cut it.'"
2. "Tin Man"
Lambert released "Tin Man" in 2017, writing the song with frequent collaborators Jack Ingram and Jon Randall. The song is from her The Weight of These Wings album, released after her split from Shelton. The song shows Lambert's own broken heart, singing, "Every time you're feeling empty / Better thank your lucky stars / 'Cause if you ever felt one breaking / You'd never want a heart," the song shows a vulnerable side of Lambert.
Lambert was inspired by Kenny Chesney's song of the same name, out in 1994. Lambert says it is one of her favorite songs of all time.
"This song sort of wrote itself," Lambert tells The Tennessean, admitting that she was a "little worried" about releasing a song with the same title. "But I told Kenny ... I felt the same emotion I feel when I hear that song. I was feeling it myself and the other two co-writers were feeling it as well. It comes from the same place and I guess it inspired it."
3. "Me and Charlie Talking"
"Me and Charlie Talking" is Lambert's first single, and gave little indication of the kind of songs she would release in her career. A nostalgic song about young love, Lambert wrote the song with her father, Rick Lambert, and Heather Little.
"Me and Charlie Talking" says "Charlie said he wanted to get married / But we were only ten, so we'd have to wait," part of a feel-good song that Little started writing, before the two Lamberts took over.
"She and her dad took off about half the chorus, added a middle verse, and that became her first single," Little recalls.
4. "Settling Down"
"Settling down" shows Lambert's complicated relationship she has with herself. The song, which Lambert along with Natalie Hemby and Luke Dick, begins with, "Should I give up sunsets for marigold mornings? / Should I look for rainbows or wait for the rain? / Is happiness on the highway or it is parked in the driveway?"
"I was talking with my bus driver one day," Lambert recalls on Stage Right Secrets. "We were both going through something hard, and there's no better way to talk about it than over the highway, right? We both at the time were like, 'Are we settling up or are we settling down?' With people, with life, with our situations, like what's going on?' I kind of wrote that in my phone. And Natalie had this line when I went in to write with her and Luke: 'Should I give up sunsets for marigold mornings?' And I thought that was so pretty, I said, 'Well that might go with this kind of idea that I have.'"
Lambert wed Brendan McLoughlin in 2019, one year before "Settling Down" came out, with her husband starring in the video.
