Miranda Lambert has had a colorful career as an A-lister since placing
third on Nashville Star at just 19. She's now one of the most well-known names in country music
and her life in the spotlight has given her lots of her own pain.
Here are some of the tragic details about Miranda Lambert.
Lambert grew up in a very loving home with her brother and their parents.
But mom and dad had a private investigation business, so they often exposed their kids to bad
behavior — directly and indirectly. Thankfully, Miranda's direct involvement was pretty harmless.
Her mother, Beverly, revealed in an interview for From Cradle To Stage: Stories From Mothers
Who Rocked And Raised Rock Stars that she once had Miranda put on a cheerleading outfit and
pretend to be selling candy while she sneakily looked for evidence that her parents needed.
The sadness of her parents' job is what impacted Miranda most
because they would sometimes bring home abused women and children they
encountered while investigating cases. As she described it to The Guardian,
"We brought all the pain in."
Miranda said that she let her own pain
from witnessing trauma out through songs. She explained,
"I had Mom making cookies after school, and I also had moms whose partners were
beating the crap out of them. Gunpowder & Lead was in my household for a long time."
Speaking about her family in an interview with Success, Lambert shared,
"My parents worked their asses off my whole life,
but when you are self-employed like that, sometimes things just go down the tubes,
and the phone stops ringing. You just have to start over, and that's what they did."
That meant the Lamberts rented a small house described as "rat-infested"
in the book From Cradle To Stage. Miranda's mom Beverly admitted that she would pray,
"God, give me the ground under my feet."
Of those hard times, Miranda told Success,
"I learned how to do chores because you have to carry your weight."
When they were more stable again, the Lamberts still "lived off the land" to support themselves.
Miranda's father, Richard, would hunt to put meat on the table for his family,
and Miranda developed a love for the sport. She admitted,
"My dad said, 'My family will never go hungry again,' and we didn't.
So I guess I got that fighter spirit in me because I want to work,
I want to provide, because back when I was a kid, it got ingrained in me."
When Lambert married fellow country music star Blake Shelton in 2011,
they instantly rose to "power couple" status in the eyes of the public.
"We sing to each other all the time and it normally doesn't go that well because
for the most part I can't stand the music that she listens to."
2011 is the same year that Shelton became a judge on NBC's hit singing competition The Voice,
and it quickly presented an obstacle for the newlyweds. TMZ reported that Lambert strongly
preferred the couple's home in Oklahoma to Los Angeles, where Shelton had to film the show most
of the year. Lambert would visit her husband, but Shelton admitted to People magazine in 2012,
"She does that for me way more than I've ever done that for her. She's
always been the one to go through hell to make sure we spend time together."
There's also the fact that Lambert left family and friends in Texas to move to Oklahoma and be
with Shelton. Success reported that Lambert felt "lost" after the move,
and Shelton encouraged her to start businesses to fill her time. In 2015, Lambert said,
"I think maybe he knew that it would make me feel like I planted some roots in our new place,
and it definitely did that."
"We're not country music stars at home, we're very normal country people."
It may have worked for a while, but perhaps not surprisingly, the couple split that same year. TMZ
reported that Lambert decided their long-distance situation was, quote, "no way to live."
Lambert chose to rebuild her life in a brand new city after her divorce from Blake Shelton
rather than immediately move home to Texas. On her Wildheart tour in 2020,
she told a Nashville crowd,
"I moved here in 2015 in the middle of a s--- show. But I was lifted up
by people who were like, 'we got you, girl."
The singer admitted that she spent a lot of time at bars in midtown Nashville, adding,
"I realized at that point, somehow sittin' there cryin' in my beer like we do when we sing country
music, it healed me all the way. Like, deep down healed me to the bone."
Lambert wrote songs in those bars. While beer and music have been a remedy for heartache,
it's still sad to picture a country music superstar
alone in a dark bar crying in her beer and writing lyrics on a napkin.
The truth about what caused the end of Shelton and Lambert's marriage may lie somewhere in
between two stories. While Radar Online reported that Lambert was spotted allegedly "acting like
a couple" with fellow country singer Chris Young in March 2015, TMZ reported that it
was her alleged relationship with another man that prompted Shelton to file papers.
Perhaps because both of them are in the spotlight, the rumors about Lambert and Young got so out
of hand that Young released a statement of denial on his social media accounts, saying,
"I don’t normally address gossip but in this case I will. My name has been mentioned as a
contributing factor in Blake and Miranda’s divorce. That is totally FALSE. They are
both my friends and I would not betray that friendship. Just wanted to clear that up."
According to E! News, a joint statement in regards to their divorce from Shelton and Lambert read:
"This is not the future we envisioned and it is with heavy hearts that we move forward separately.
We are real people, with real lives, with real families, friends and colleagues. Therefore,
we kindly ask for privacy and compassion concerning this very personal matter."
But the cheating rumors didn't end there for Lambert. She allegedly cheated on her
next boyfriend — singer Anderson East — with Evan Felker, a member of the band Turnpike Troubadours,
who opened for Lambert on the Livin' Like Hippies tour, according to US Weekly.
Blame supposedly goes both ways when it comes to the end of Shelton and Lambert's marriage.
TMZ reported that a source close to Lambert's team said that she never cheated on her ex-husband,
but Shelton cheated on her with a fellow singer. The source thought Shelton's PR team,
quote, "attacked Miranda before the ink was dry on the divorce docs."
Shelton allegedly cheated on Lambert with late singer Cady Groves sometime between 2013 and 2014.
Days after Shelton and Lambert filed for divorce in 2015, Groves posted since-deleted
tweets about lost love, according to Hollywood Life. She reportedly tweeted,
"It's sick that I experienced a once in a lifetime's love-still
as strong as the day it happened- [and] have been punished every single day since. I never quit
loving you — you just ran. [...] After all these years- it's you. Always was: always will be."
Grooves unexpectedly passed away in May 2020
of complications from chronic alcohol abuse, as Today reported.
Lambert and Shelton faced grief together several times during their four-year marriage.
First, Blake's father, Dick Shelton, passed away while the couple was newlywed — in
January 2012. Dick's health had been declining. A statement on Blake's website at the time read:
"I appreciate your understanding during this difficult time and thank you for all your prayers.
Your support means the world to me."
Later in the month, Lambert lost her childhood friend when he was hit by a
car on the side of the road after stopping to help a driver who was out of gas. She tweeted,
"I have lost a friend I've had since 3rd grade today in a tragic accident.
When will this pain end. Please pray for peace."
She might have been referring to experiencing two big losses within weeks of each other.
Lambert also helped Blake face one of his biggest family tragedies via song when the
couple co-wrote her hit track "Over You" about Blake's brother Richie Shelton's tragic passing
in a car accident in 1990. Of writing the song with her husband, Lambert told Success,
"We'll never have that feeling like we did when we wrote it. To share that as a couple,
it's incredible. It just took our relationship to the next level."
Lambert loves to write and perform music, but she'd definitely like to
leave some aspects of celebrity in the dust. She told Health magazine in 2019,
"When everyone's worried about your personal life, it makes you feel like,
'Well, if you could just spend some of that time talking about my actual art,
that would be great!' I'm never gonna get used to the public eye in that way."
It's hard being a woman in country music and Lambert told Success that she's let
the pressure get the best of her sometimes. She admitted,
"If something happened, I'd throw a fit.
But I think once you've proved your point, you don't have to scream."
Part of Lambert's frustration may have had to do with a strange trend among her hits.
In 2018, she told The Washington Post,
"Yes, I had to sing with someone with a penis to get a number one."
Lambert chooses to say what she needs to say on her records
rather than worry about getting hits on the radio. That was especially true with
her 2016 post-divorce double album The Weight Of These Wings. She told Hits Daily Double,
"I know radio's been a struggle, but I really needed to say these things."
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