Miranda Lambert turned heartbreak into a whole lot of music after her 2015 divorce from Blake Shelton.
The country star opened up about the emotional chapter on the And The Writer Is… podcast on October 27, revealing that moving back to Nashville helped her channel the pain into songwriting rather than keeping it bottled up.
“When I moved back in 2015, I gathered up all of my friends and relationships from all of the previous years and just used it,” Lambert shared. “Used the misery.”
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And she meant it. From late nights at honky-tonks to the friendships that helped her navigate single life, Lambert pulled from whatever was happening around her.
“I used what I was living, and my friends went on that journey with me—friends being songwriters. And I think I wrote 75 songs.”
That creative burst eventually helped shape The Weight of These Wings, an album that marked a major moment in her career.
Spending much of the year writing with her guitar in hand helped Lambert grow as both a vocalist and a songwriter.
“It was kind of magical,” she said, contrasting the experience with making her earlier album Platinum. “It wasn’t writing towards a specific record or a sound or a feisty or whatever. It was raw emotion.”
Still, turning a painful breakup into great music didn’t mean the experience itself was easy. Lambert acknowledged the added pressure of dealing with a divorce while living under the spotlight.
“I got divorced, and that sucks for anyone, especially in the public eye,” she explained, “especially on tour, especially in the middle of a very public career.”
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Her verdict on that period? “a really not fun time.”
Shelton began dating Gwen Stefani in November 2015, and the pair later married.
