It has taken me awhile to get to this review, as Miranda Lambert released her latest album Wildcard on November 1st, 2019. The delay wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say about the album, that’s for damn sure. In fact, the opposite is true now that I’ve listened to entire album about a hundred times.
I reviewed 2 of the songs, “It All Comes Out in the Wash” and “Locomotive” when they were released a promo singers back in July. Since that time Miranda also released a cluster of other songs via online streaming sites leading up to the album’s release in November. I wasn’t too sure if that was a good idea because what if the promo singles were all better songs than the rest of the album; that would have been a let-down. Yet that wasn’t that case with Wildcard because overall there is actually only one song on the entire album I do not like, “Too Pretty For Prison”. That song is just a bunch of noise to me and I am not a fan of Maren Morris, so there’s that.
I won’t get into a song-by-song review, but the album plays like a mixed bag of Halloween candy….in a GOOD way. There are many tasty nuggets to chew on, to think about, to rock to, to sing to, etc. The general buzz about the album was that its sound is more “rock” than any other Miranda album. I would agree to a certain extend, but this is not a “rock” album, generally it swings more “pop rock”. There are a few songs that even dip into ’80s pop rock, specifically. But, as is always the case with Miranda Lambert, the songs pack a punch.
Miranda Lambert usually records songs that seem to represent her personality in some way. She either writes lyrics like that or she picks those types of songs and I don’t think any other artist does this as much as she does. Wildcard definitely continues this trend because I get the feeling Miranda is the one that keeps the bluebird in her heart, still visits dark bars, feels pretty bitchin’, puts that sucker on spin, and so forth. Each song is like a little window into her life, heart, mind and soul. And there are ton of lyrics that you could pull from Wildcard and post as bad ass memes. The songwriting is stellar!
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