After Miranda Lambert‘s divorce papers were signed, and her split with Blake Shelton was finalized on July 20, 2015, she took out another piece of paper and wrote down her emotions.
And the music is way better than what any tabloid has to say on the subject.
That’s because “Vice” is a brutally honest performance of Lambert owning her imperfections in her own words. In a new interview with the Tennessean, she reveals the song was created “in exactly the moment that I felt exactly like this.”
“I wrote this at the exact time of the s–t hitting the fan,” she recalls of writing the song with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. “I think it’s great, though. It’s documented on paper with emotion.”
She adds only a couple of the vices mentioned in the song are her own.
“Everybody has a vice of some sort,” she says. “Sometimes when you’re going through something in your life, you may run to some things you shouldn’t and run from some things you shouldn’t. I think this song is an opportunity to just be honest and own it and say, ‘Yeah, I have some imperfections, and I live a life and here and there I might get in a pickle.’
“It’s not about one thing or another. Everybody has a vice they run to when they need comfort, and I think that’s what this song says. There’s no mystery here. I run to things for comfort just like everybody else.”
In the first verse, she sings of one of her vices being a stack of vinyl records full of heartbreak songs that hurt so good they must be played twice.
Next, she moves to alcohol, calling it, “sweet salvation on a dining room table,” in the second verse.
Then in the third verse she gets good at goodbye by running through new towns faster than women run through clothes.
In the choruses, she seeks out another life in another town with another bed she shouldn’t warm. All four vices – heartbreak songs, booze, leaving and another life with another bed – lead up to a nail-biting resolve where she gives herself one hard look in a bathroom mirror and admits she’s lost.
She sings, “Don’t know where I am or how I got here/Well the only thing that I know how to find/Is another vice.”
“Vice” is the lead single from her sixth studio album, which is expected sometime this fall.
“Absolutely it’s a personal project,” she says. “It’s no different than any other record I’ve made, except my story changed a little. My platform has always been, ‘Be honest, say what you want to say.’ That’s no different on this record.”
Her last album Platinum won album of the year at the 48th annual CMA Awards in 2014 as well as best country album at the 57th annual Grammy Awards in 2015.
– CMT
