Being a professional country music singer means inhabiting a rough-and-tumble world. Your team looks out for you, hopefully. Despite that, though, you also have to be vigilant for yourself. Miranda Lambert knows it from experience. She has been in the business for a long time. The "House That Built Me" singer understands the towering highs and plunging lows that can happen to anyone. Being the decent person that she is, Lambert took fellow Texan Parker McCollum under her wing. She gave him some priceless advice. He will never forget it.
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McCollum Became Successful Fairly Quickly
The "Burn It Down" singer had two successful albums to his credit - The Limestone Kid and Probably Wrong. They helped rocket him to stardom. With the fame that came with that, however, also came a ton of asks of all kinds. Trying to keep everyone happy was almost impossible for McCollum. People wanted to hitch rides on his coattails left and right.
Enter Miranda Lambert. As McCollum said when he guested on the Ten Year Town podcast hosted by Troy Cartwright, he started to use one word much more often. It's not being mean, it's being wisely self-protective.
The Word Was "No"
Parker McCollum explained, "It took me a long time to fall in love with the word no. Shout out Miranda Lambert. She was the one who really taught me a lot about that. I think she loves that word. That's her favorite word in the business, I think, and it's mine too."
He also had to learn to step back from time to time to give himself a restorative breather. Just two weeks here and there to recharge and recuperate from the incessant demands of the music scene.
Nevertheless, for a rising singer, that was hard. "As a young artist, you're so hungry, and you want to go, go, go, go, go. And that's really the only way to make it happen in this business is to do it that way - is to just grind, And you got to want it. You have a day; I think everybody probably has a day at some point where you just kind of had enough."
Fortunately, Parker McCollum seems to be mastering the art of saying no and relaxing sometimes, too.
