Miranda Lambert Goes Disco: Inside Her New Album 'Crisco'

Miranda Lambert is nominated for seven trophies at the November 18 CMA Awards — in a year when she didn't even release an album of her own. The 42-year-old Texan's new record, Crisco, won't be eligible until next year's awards, but it is already the center of her most playful career move yet: a country-disco hybrid she teased this summer with a Crisco Disco Drag Brunch in Nashville.

"If someone dresses like you and covers you in a drag show, to me, you made it," Lambert told Rolling Stone, speaking in denim, a brown suede jacket and a Texas-shaped turquoise ring. "I don't know if there's a more joyful place on Earth than a drag brunch. It's just, like, mimosas and people being their full selves and no-holds-barred. It felt like it would set the tone for this record."

What does 'Crisco' sound like?

The title signals the blend: country plus disco, in the vein of "Islands in the Stream"-era Dolly Parton — lush, layered strings and rhinestone cowboys. The direction grew out of "A Song to Sing," Lambert's groovy 2024 collaboration with Chris Stapleton. She and co-producer Jesse Frasure decided to write more in that Seventies vein.

"The Seventies is such an inspiring time in music in general, and especially in country music," Lambert says. "Great songs were great songs, and it didn't have to live in a box."

The album spans styles:

• "To Everything," a crescendoing pop confection
• "Snakeskin Boots," a duet with Ella Langley that opens the album with Lambert's familiar fire
• "Two Things Can Be True," a Patsy Cline-inspired ballad
• "Whiskey Business," where she's "gonna go all night and sleep all afternoon"

Lambert promised a decor difference from Kacey Musgraves' staged antics: "I'll have some disco balls, but they won't be balls, if that makes sense."

Why is Lambert mentoring other women?

Lambert has become a multi-hyphenate: producer of Langley's breakthrough album Dandelion, label owner, fashion entrepreneur, and co-writer of "Choosin' Texas" — which Rolling Stone calls the most successful song in Billboard Hot 100 history. Musgraves, once rumored to be her rival, recently featured Lambert on "Horses and Divorces."

In a genre where female artists rarely receive more than 10 percent of country-radio airplay, Lambert wants collaboration over competition. "We need to do this together," she says. "We don't have to be best friends all the time... but I think it's really important to lean on each other when we need to, and to support each other, because we know what it takes to do this. And it ain't easy."

Langley credits Lambert directly: "She gave me the confidence to trust my instincts."

Lambert, who debuted in 2005 without many women guiding her, frames her legacy — hits like "The House That Built Me," "White Liar" and "Mama's Broken Heart," plus 2021's The Marfa Tapes — as groundwork. "I never took the easiest path. I took the authentic path, and it feels like those doors that were open have stayed open and people are blazing through them," she says.

How deep does the Dolly connection go?

Before a Crisco playback at HiLot, a queer-friendly Lower East Side venue, Lambert changed into a rhinestone shirt that once belonged to Parton — she calls the stones "Dolly drops." She wore Parton's hoops in the "A Song to Sing" video and keeps "Dolly nuggets" in the Tennessee house she is building with her husband, former NYPD officer and sometime songwriter Brendan McLoughlin. "Would I be sitting here without [Parton]? Probably not," Lambert says.

She also recounted last year's Kennedy Center Honors, where she paid homage to George Strait and McLoughlin commandeered a closed hotel bar for an afterparty, at one point snubbing fellow honoree Sylvester Stallone. "Brendan was like, 'I would rather Sylvester Stallone kick my ass than the wrath of you for me not taking care of the King,'" Lambert recalls.

The awards exposure on November 18 precedes Crisco's own eligibility cycle, setting up Lambert — already one of country's most decorated artists — for another run at the podium next year.