Miranda Lambert has always been in her songwriting era.
From her very first charted song on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, “Me and Charlie Talking,” which Lambert co-wrote with her father Rick Lambert and fellow songwriter Heather Little, the Lindale, Tex. native has consistently chased her own vision for her music — resisting the influence that radio programmers or industry trends might wield on other artists. She’s co-written many of her own radio singles, including “Vice,” “Kerosene,” “Automatic,” “Only Prettier” and “Bluebird.”
Lambert’s open-hearted, unfiltered approach to writing is woven into the defiance of early songs including The Weight of These Wings magnum opus “Gunpowder and Lead,” the technicolor rock-tinged hues permeating Wildcard, the stripped-back campfire country of The Marfa Tapes and the free-spirited ethos threaded through Palomino. With “Y’all Means All,” she turned her songwriting muscle to causes she believes in, co-writing the inclusive song for season six of Queer Eye. Along the way, she’s earned seven Billboard Country Airplay No. 1 hits, along with seven CMA female artist of the year wins, and two CMA Awards album of the year wins (for Platinum and Revolution).
In addition to her solo projects, the Academy of Country Music triple crown and entertainer of the yer winner has earned acclaim for several collaborative projects, including albums with her Pistol Annies cohorts Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe, as well as her The Marfa Tapes collaborators, longtime co-writers Jack Ingram and Jon Randall.
But over the past year, Lambert has been putting in extra time in the writing rooms, with her songwriting credits showing up on new songs recorded by Chris Stapleton, Jelly Roll and Morgan Wallen. The Wallen-recorded “Thought You Should Know,” which Lambert wrote with Wallen and Nicolle Galyon, became Lambert’s first No. 1 single on which she was solely a songwriter.
Here, we rank some of Lambert’s top-written songs that have been recorded by other artists.
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Jon Pardi and Lauren Alaina, “Don’t Blame It On Whiskey”
Lambert teamed with Eric Church, Luke Laird and Michael Heeney to craft this track, included on Pardi’s album Heartache Medication. The song, which was originally written for Church’s 2011 Chief album (though ultimately not making the project), centers on a couple edging toward their breaking point, and reaching a place where courage is required to be vulnerable about their relational problems, rather than placing the blame on liquor.
“It was very simple,” Pardi previously told Taste of Country of the demo. “It was just a drum track and a guitar lead and a guitar and vocal from Eric and Miranda. You could just hear the bus humming so it was just a work tape, but it sounded really good.”
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Blake Shelton, “Suffocating”
Over the years, Lambert has collaborated with Blake Shelton (to whom Lambert was wed from 2011 to 2015) on songs including “Over You” and “Bare Skin Rug,” while Lambert and her Pistol Annies bandmates contributed vocals to Shelton’s hit “Boys ‘Round Here.” Lambert was featured on “Draggin’ The River” from Shelton’s 2010 EP All About Tonight, but she also contributed songwriting work to another track on the project: “Suffocating,” which she wrote with country trio Lady A member Hillary Scott.
Lambert and Scott wrote the song years ago, while on tour with Kenny Chesney. “It was one of the many nights I hopped on her bus and we stayed up late just drinking wine and playing music and writing music,” Scott told The Boot in 2010.
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Parker McCollum, “Falling Apart”
Featured on McCollum’s Jon Randall-produced 2021 album Gold Chain Cowboy, “Falling Apart” is the creation of a cohort of Texas songwriters: Lambert, Parker, Randall and Randy Rogers. The self-incriminating track (“Maybe you are better with someone else/ Maybe I just saved you from myself”) has a unique rock edge that Parker called “a .38 Special rip-off track.
“I wasn’t sure how or where it would fit on the record, and it just so happened that Jon [Randall] was jamming some .38 Special on his guitar and I said, ‘Dude, why does nobody ever cut songs like this anymore?’” McCollum told Lyric Magazine.
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Luke Combs, “Outrunnin’ Your Memory”
This Lambert co-write with Combs and songwriter Dan Isbell was featured on Combs’ 2022 Growin’ Up album. Initially, plans for the song did not include a vocal collaboration, but it turned out that Lambert was the perfect fit.
“We wrote that song together, and it wasn’t like we sat down to write a duet,” Combs previously told press, according to ABC News. “I didn’t plan to have her on my album and she didn’t plan for us to write a song for hers,” he said. “There were no intentions in the songwriting other than, ‘Let’s go write a song that we both think is really good.’ When we were going in the studio, I was like, ‘I gotta cut this song.’ It was never like, ‘Man, it’s gonna be this duet, and we’re gonna do this.’ It was like, ‘We gotta have her on this song, right? It’s too good, and she’s too good, not to do it.’”
“Outrunnin’ Your Memory” reached the top 30 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
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Brothers Osborne, “We Ain’t Good at Breaking Up”
Lambert co-wrote and sang backing vocals on “We Ain’t Good at Breaking Up,” included on Brothers Osborne’s Grammy-nominated self-titled album. Lambert co-wrote the song with the duo’s TJ and John Osborne, as well as songwriter-producer Jesse Frasure, with the title inspired by a phrase TJ often said when asked if he and his boyfriend were still together.
“There was a time early in our relationship where we felt like it didn’t make a lot of sense, we didn’t live near each other, we were both so busy and other different things, that we tried to call it off, but we would try to break up and we just wouldn’t,” TJ told Billboard earlier this year.
Frasure recognized the song potential in the phrase. “He said, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to write that song next week in our [writing session] with Miranda,’” TJ Osborne recalled. Lambert lent her voice to the demo for the song, and they decided to add her to the full-fledged recording of the song. “It just really makes the song, sends it into a dreamy, almost Fleetwood Mac kind of thing,” TJ said.
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Jelly Roll, “The Lost”
Lambert paired with Jelly Roll and writer-producer Jesse Frasure to write “The Lost,” which was included on Jelly Roll’s 2023 album Whitsitt Chapel; Lambert also provided background vocals on the song.
“Jesse Frasure asked me to be part of a co-write last minute. He was like, ‘Hey come write with me and Jelly,’ and I had never met him but was like, ‘Sure,’” Lambert previously told Billboard. “But instantly, I felt such a connection and he’s such a kindred spirit. He was just a lovely person, and he’s a great songwriter. Just talking to him, it felt like home. It felt like I had known Jelly forever. He’s just one of those welcoming personalities, and we had such a good time writing together. Luckily, our song did land on his record, which I am super excited about. I definitely made new lifelong friends in him and [Jelly Roll’s wife] Bunnie. It’s fun to, this far into the game, still collaborate and meet new people and this younger generation of artists who are emerging and learn new things from them and stay fresh. It feels cool to be part of that.”
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The Highwomen, “My Only Child”
Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby teamed up as the musical collective The Highwomen, inspired by the idea of forming a female supergroup in tribute to the country supergroup The Highwaymen. The four artists released the The Highwomen’s eponymous album in 2019.
Lambert co-wrote this tender ballad with Hemby and Shires. The song centers on a mother’s love for her only child and her disappointment at not having more children, though the song also touches on how fleeting childhood can be.
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Ashley Monroe, “I’m Good at Leavin'”
“I got a knack for being free/ I’m just following a feeling,” Ashley Monroe sings on this song from her 2015 album The Blade. Lambert and Monroe co-wrote this track with songwriter Jessi Alexander.
“I wrote it out on the road with Miranda,” Monroe told Glamour back in 2015. “Right now I’m good at leaving life and being on the road right now.”
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Morgan Wallen, “Thought You Should Know”
Lambert earned her first No. 1 Billboard Country Airplay hit solely as a songwriter when Morgan Wallen’s “Thought You Should Know” spent three weeks at the chart’s pinnacle starting in February 2023 (the song also reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart). Lambert and songwriter Nicolle Galyon aided Wallen in writing the tenderhearted ode to Wallen’s mother, Lesli.
Lambert said in a social media post celebrating the song’s success, “Congrats @morganwallen on your number 1 song “Thought You Should Know”. Proud to be a writer on a song about your mama! This is the first number 1 song I’ve ever had as a writer. We did good that day y’all. Cheers friends.”
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Chris Stapleton, “What Am I Gonna Do”
Lambert and Stapleton co-wrote the opening track on Stapleton’s new album Higher, which released Nov. 10. “What Am I Gonna Do” is a stone-cold country-soul lament, as the protagonist contemplates a swiftly fizzling relationship and what life post-love will look like.
According to an interview Stapleton did with Today’s Country Radio with Kelleigh Bannen, “What Am I Gonna Do” is a song the two wrote years ago. “I could only remember half the song and I didn’t have a copy,” Stapleton said. “I was like, ‘Do you have a copy of this song?’ and she was kind enough to go looking for it and digging for it, and she found it and so we could cut it, and that’s how it wound up on the record.”
Of course, this is far from the first time these two towering singer-songwriters have collaborated. Stapleton contributed “Nobody’s Fool” to Lambert’s 2011 album Four the Record, and Lambert backed up Stapleton on vocals during the 2021 Academy of Country Music Awards, singing Stapleton’s “Maggie’s Song.”
