4 Valid Reasons To NOT Love Miranda Lambert

Earlier this morning, I posted a new article about all the reasons why you should love modern country music legend Miranda Lambert just as much as I do.

Well, I am nothing if not fair and balanced. It’s what everyone says about me. Google it if you don’t believe me. And to prove it even harder, here I am following up my earlier article with a rebuttal to that article.

Here are four valid reasons to NOT love Miranda Lambert.

Her Breakthrough Hit Was a Total Ripoff

You know that thing where a band gets huge on account of a cover song and it feels kinda unfair? The tale behind Miranda Lambert’s first hit is a little worse than that.

The song is called “Kerosene” …

… and it is an absolute banger.

Unfortunately, it is also an absolute copy of the 1996 Steve Earle comeback single “I Feel Alright.”

Apparently the country music industry as a whole has cracked down on the crime of embedding music videos in Substack articles, so you’ll have to listen to “I Feel Alright” the way God intended, as the soundtrack to the closing montage of the worst season of The Wire.

Those songs are identical to the point that they both have very similar harmonica solos at damn near the exact same timestamp.

However, I don’t hold this against Miranda Lambert for a few reasons.

For starters, she immediately gave Steve Earle writing credit once the similarities were pointed out to her. He didn’t have to take her to court over it or anything.

Also, Steve Earle and Miranda Lambert recorded a duet called “This Is How It Ends” for Earle’s 2017 album So You Wanna Be An Outlaw.

If he’s not mad about “Kerosene” sounding exactly like “I Feel Alright” then I’m not either.

She Loves Loves Loves Loves Guns

As mentioned in the article about why you should love Miranda Lambert, there’s a damn good reason why she so enthusiastically supports gun ownership. Her parents opened their home to victims of domestic violence when she was a kid. She heard lots of stories from battered women and that informed her songwriting. The song “Gunpowder and Lead” was written while she was enrolled in a concealed handgun carry class.

Also, she’s from Texas and, if you can believe it, was raised in what her dad calls a “gun culture.”

“Miranda has lived in gun culture all her life. I'm a firearms collector and hunter. She was taught to shoot when she was a little bitty girl. So it's natural for her to put a gun in a song.”

In that same article, her dad adds this about his daughter’s “pistol with wings” logo.

"You know what that means? It means if you jack with the Lamberts, we'll send you to heaven."

So, I get why Miranda Lambert is a fan of guns. She has bullets in her blood. That doesn’t change the fact that I’d really love it if we had way fewer guns in this country.

Our disagreement on this matter does not lessen my enjoyment of her music, though. Writing off a country artist for loving guns would be like writing off a K-Pop group for ripping off Missy Elliott. Where would it even end? Damn near everyone would have to go.

She’s Married To a Cop

Look, I’m not gonna be that guy who brings Miranda Lambert’s romantic history into this. Has she left a disgruntled ex-wife or two in her wake over the years? Sure. But there are always two halves to a transaction of that nature and putting all of the blame on the “other woman” is old timey bullshit that we ought not be engaging in anymore.

That said, I will admit that I’m not psyched that her romantic journey has seemingly ended with her being hitched to a cop. And not just any cop. An NYPD cop.

His name is Brendan McLoughlin and the two met while he was working security on the set of Good Morning America when Lambert appeared on the show in 2018.

So ACAB includes Miranda Lambert I guess, but this isn’t at all surprising. Her gun-lovin’ dad was a former cop turned private detective and her one and only scripted television appearance was on an episode of Law and Order SVU.

So yeah, she loves cops and guns. So did Elvis. Am I supposed to hold that against him? Because I sure do, but it doesn’t make “Suspicious Minds” any less of a banger and I will be eternally bummed that I never got to see him in concert. Multiple things can be true at once.

She’s Doing a Couple Shows With Kid Rock and Jason Aldean This Summer

Not gonna lie, this one sucks a whole lot. This summer, Miranda Lambert will be performing on the “Rock the Country” tour. That’s a bummer because that tour is a co-headlining trek featuring right wing shit stains Kid Rock and Jason Aldean at the top of the bill.

Appearing alongside Kid Rock seemingly does not jibe with Miranda Lambert’s staunch support for the LGBTQ community, and she’s been getting all of the flack she deserves for it. Of course, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, and in this case, it is that right wingers are mad at Kid Rock for having Miranda Lambert on the tour.

I think there are a couple of ways to look at this that make it seem at least a little less bad. For one thing, at least the lineup won’t be made up exclusively of bigots, so that’s nice.

Beyond that, this is a festival, not a traditional tour. Miranda Lambert is among more than 20 other acts who will appear at various stops, and she’s only on two of those stops. That the Rock the Country Festival, a tour that is hitting small towns only, coincides with the dates for her own 2024 tour, which is similarly visiting mostly small, out of the way markets, probably played into the decision as well.

Again, I agree that it sucks, but I suspect there’s little to no way to operate within country music without sometimes bumping shoulders with people who “love America” in the most disgusting ways possible.

But hey, if you want to cancel Miranda Lambert over this, I totally get it. Just please understand that you are going to have to take someone else with you.

Goddammit, Dolly Parton. God. Dammit.