Although you would never know it listening to her debut studio album, Kerosene, which marks its 20th anniversary on March 15, the Lindale native was figuratively licking her wounds when she entered the studio to lay down these dozen tracks, all of which save one — “I Can’t Be Bothered” — she wrote or co-wrote.
At the time of its release, the 21-year-old Lambert was the third-place finalist on the now-defunct singing competition Nashville Star, and the country music establishment was only a year past its defenestration of the then-Dixie Chicks for Natalie Maines’ infamous comment about the George W. Bush administration while performing in London.
The genre was — then as now — disproportionately stacked with male artists of varying quality: Rascal Flatts, Tracy Lawrence, Gary Allan and Montgomery Gentry all had chart-topping country songs in 2004. The only woman in sight on the charts, on stage or on the airwaves at the time was Gretchen Wilson, whose Here for the Party (and its punchy single “Redneck Woman”) was one of the year’s biggest releases.
Into this breach stepped Lambert, who, in a deeply canny move, head faked the gatekeepers with the title track, a snarling, seething, stomping kiss-off which looks and feels of a piece with “Redneck Woman,” but is merely the tease to get the curious in the door. (Even more savvily, “Kerosene” was the album’s third single, following “Me and Charlie Talking” and “Bring Me Down.”)
From this first salvo through today, Lambert has reliably given good ferocity — her sophomore album, 2007's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, would drive that point home with a flourish — but above all else, Lambert is a remarkably empathic, thoughtful songwriter whose simple, direct examinations of the human spirit land with far more force than anything up-tempo and angry.
For Kerosene, she aligned herself with producers Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke, the former because she admired his work with, among others, her Texas compatriot Jack Ingram. Wrucke contributed guitar, keyboards and backing vocals, and Lambert got a lift from a few other notables: Natalie Hemby, Buddy Miller and Mando Saenz pitched in vocally.
And It's Still Fire
But Kerosene is Lambert’s show from beginning to end. Particularly in hindsight, it is remarkable how fully formed the artist was at first blush. She moves from strength to strength, whether it’s the achingly poignant “Greyhound Bound for Nowhere” (which she co-wrote with her father, Rick) or the bouncy, folk-flecked “Me and Charlie Talking” (another co-write with Rick) or the shattering closer “Love Your Memory.” “I want to please radio,” Lambert told writer Jeff Crossan in a 2006 interview. “I want to have songs on the radio, and I want to have number-one hits. Doesn’t everybody? But I want to do it and still stay true to Miranda Lambert. I can’t worry about [being different] because that’s where you get into the danger zone as far as selling out. I put it out of my mind. I think I wrote my best songs when I didn’t have a clue, because I actually wrote from my heart and I meant the words I was saying.”
Indeed, the material is largely preoccupied with matters of the heart and a hunger for the open road — arguably the twin engines of Lambert’s art ever since — but all of it is delivered with poise, polish and her tangy East Texas accent spicing the vowels with a heat that fairly leaps from the speakers.
While Nashville Star saw fit to elevate two men in their 40s — Buddy Jewell and John Arthur Martinez — ahead of the then-19-year-old Lambert (in that way, the show was a fine primer on what to expect from the industry itself), time and talent has laid bare the truth. Jewell briefly tasted success, as his self-titled major label debut went gold, and Martinez released two more albums after appearing on the show, seemingly calling it a career in 2009.
Lambert’s debut, meanwhile, electrified the critics.
“Only 20 when she recorded this spunky set of honky-tonk, country-rock and Sheryl Crow-style ballads last year, Lambert’s got Dixie Chicks-like potential,” raved Entertainment Weekly in March 2005. “Her vocals evoke Natalie Maines, and she clearly knows how to write a killer tune.”
“Against all odds, this is a rarity in modern mainstream country: a piece of product that’s friendly, tuneful, sharper and more genuine than it initially seems,” observed All Music Guide.
Being underestimated served Lambert well: Kerosene ultimately went platinum and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart (something accomplished by only five other brand-new artists in 14 years’ time), as the title track cracked the top 20 of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart.
With her sophomore record, 2007's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lambert expanded upon the pleasures and promise of Kerosene and shot into the country music stratosphere — Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would net Lambert an Album of the Year trophy at the 2008 Academy of Country Music Awards — where she’s remained ever since. (As of this writing, her award tally includes 35 ACM Awards, 14 Country Music Association Awards, seven CMT Music Awards, six American Country Awards and three Grammys — Lambert is the most awarded female artist in the history of the CMAs.)
Remarkably, two decades on, Lambert is as she was when country music first met her: equal parts tender and tough, one of the finest songwriters a state with no shortage of fine songwriters has ever produced, and a guiding light for a generation of artists who, like her, continue to contend with a myopic, misogynistic genre, but understand the value of making your voice — free from any interference or dilution — heard loud and clear.
Simply put, Miranda Lambert scorched country music with Kerosene, and it hasn’t been the same since.
