Well this is certainly something. What exactly to make of that something, we’ll have to wait and see. But whatever Miranda Lambert is cooking up, its ingredients are “Country” and “Disco.”
We already knew to expect new music from Miranda Lambert sooner than later. Announced on April 20th, she signed a new recording contract with MCA to release a future album. Lambert recorded for Nashville-based Sony imprints for the first nine albums of her career, including landing seven #1 albums in a row, and a #2 with her final album for the label, 2022’s Palomino before moving to Republic/Big Loud for 2024’s Postcards From Texas.
Then on Thursday, April 30th, an email went out to folks subscribed to Miranda Lambert’s channels simply saying “Somethin’ is cookin’” with the picture of two bedazzled cans sitting in a pantry, one labeled “Country” and the other labeled “Disco.”
Now don’t get the crease in your Wranglers too bunched up over this, or bust out your old “Death Before Disco” T-shirt just yet. The simple fact is some of the stuff from guys like Waylon Jennings and Jerry Reed back in the day was about is disco country as it comes, not to mention the whole Urban Cowboy era, which can be heard influencing many of the tracks of the new Ella Langley album Dandelion co-produced by Lambert.
On the website countryanddisco.com that appears to be constructed exclusively for Miranda and whatever she has in store, there’s the image of a buttered biscuit, as well as a 51-second soundbite that includes snippets of songs like Dolly and Kenny’s “Islands in the Stream” (written by the Bee Gees’ Gibb brothers), Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” by Loretta Lynn, Linda Ronstadt, Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis,” among other selections.
Also peppered within these samples are numerous snippets of songs that Miranda Lambert is singing, including one where she’s clearly heard singing “Country and disco.” That means she’s probably not just teasing a specific song, but an entire album of country disco tracks, and laying a trail of bread crumbs tracing back the legacy of these two genres, and how they have intertwined at times.
Along with pre-save buttons for Spotify and Apple Music, there’s also a countdown clock counting down toward Friday, May 15th on the countryanddisco.com website. That’s when apparently all will be revealed … likely a lead single and an album announcement.
But ahead of it, Miranda Lambert isn’t just looking to stoke a little attention. She’s looking to broach a conversation about how country and disco might not be as disparate as some think, and that the ’90s aren’t the only era worthy of resurrecting in country music.
Stay tuned.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source savingcountrymusic.com ’
