Crazy Ex-Girlfriend by Miranda Lambert
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the second studio album by American country artist, Miranda Lambert. The album was released May 1, 2007 on Columbia Nashville Records and was produced by Frank Liddell and Mike Wrucke. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was Lambert's first studio album released under the Columbia Nashville label, as 2005's Kerosene was issued on Epic Nashville Records. The album received high critical acclaim, with critics commenting on Lambert's revengeful material. The album went to number one on the United States' Top Country Albums chart and also reached number 6 on the overall American chart. Out of the album's four singles, three were major hits on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart between 2007 and 2009. "Gunpowder & Lead," the third single released from the album, became her first Top 10 hit on the country chart in 2008. Other singles spawned from the album were, "Famous in a Small Town," and "More Like Her." In late Spring 2008, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend won the Album of the Year award at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
Miranda Lambert flipped the bird to the sophomore slump with the release of 2007’s <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i>. The album spawned her first Top 10 country hit—the soulful twang-rock corker “Gunpowder & Lead”—and was her first full-length to take home Album of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i> covers vast stylistic ground: upbeat honky-tonk, scorching bar-band rockers and stripped-down midtempo ballads. A cover of the Emmylou Harris-popularised, Carlene Carter co-written “Easy from Now On” even boasts a gentle folk vibe.<br /> “Easy from Now On” is, in fact, one of the few songs Lambert didn’t write or co-write on <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i>, and the album’s tunes are almost exclusively written by women. That fact, more than anything else, explains why its main characters are emotionally complex females who enjoy toying with expectations—the cheeky dreamer of “Famous In a Small Town”, the narrator yearning for a drink in “Dry Town”.<br /> However, <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i>’s protagonists are generally preoccupied with much weightier topics. The wistful (if slightly bitter) “More LIke Her” is written from the perspective of a woman wronged by an ex with a wandering eye, while the heat-packing narrator of “Gunpowder & Lead” is getting revenge on an abuser. And the title track is meant to reclaim the insulting label as a badge of honour, although the main character’s reckless behavior (and white-hot rage) is anything but harmless. Lambert has continued to explore blurry moral middle grounds—and the power of righteous anger—on subsequent albums, but the gut-wrenching <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i> feels as honest and raw today as it did upon release.
