Miranda Lambert: Still No Apology From Eric Church
Miranda Lambert hasn't heard from Eric Church since she suggested last month that the fellow country star should "grovel" in apology to her and hubby Blake Shelton.
But if she has any message for Church, it's this: Dude, she is "Over You."
Before performing Thursday night at the CMA Festival, Lambert was asked backstage if she'd gotten the apology she was looking for from Church. "No," she answered, before adding that she understood how her one-time pal and former opening act might've gotten himself into trouble with a controversial Rolling Stone interview. "I think that anybody can get roped into a really bad interview situation. I've had things printed about me before that sounded way worse than they were. I know he said what he said. But it died off just like anything else that happens. Everybody loves to call it a feud. It's not really a feud. It's just 'Dude, you totally messed up and you know it,' and you move on."
It sounds like Lambert still wouldn't mind hearing Church eat some humble pie. But obviously she's a little less heated than she was in mid-May, when she suggested in a radio interview that if she ran into Church, "I'm sure he would be groveling, because he should... He probably didn't realize he was cutting down his friends when he did it, but either way, he said something stupid and it's going to take a long time to make it up to people that he offended."
In case you've forgotten what the "something stupid" was, Church said in Rolling Stone, "If I was concerned about my legacy, there's no way I would ever sit there [and be a reality-show judge]... Honestly, if Blake Shelton and Cee Lo Green turn around in a red chair, you got a deal? That's crazy. I don't know what would make an artist do that. You're not an artist."
At the time, Lambert (who placed third in a music reality show early in her career) tweeted, "Thanks Eric Church for saying I'm not a real artist. Or @kelly_clarkson, @carrieunderwood & @KeithUrban. You're welcome for the tour in 2010." She also tweaked Church for saying he didn't want any old people in the audience to bring down the energy at his shows, tweeting, "Uh-oh, Willie better hurry! He turned 79 yesterday!"
Lambert has gotten into other fleeting Twitter beefs this year with Chris Brown and Ashton Kutcher. But she said she doesn't really keep up with that many people on Twitter.
"I follow Oprah and Jessica Simpson," she said backstage Thursday. "I unfollow Blake quite frequently. Some days it's just too much! If I'm gonna check on somebody, I'll definitely check Blake, to see who he's following and why, and why they're all hot girls. Check his direct messages—just things like that, no big deal," she laughed.
Lambert's just released a new single, "Fastest Girl in Town," which is the song off her Four the Record album that's most reflective of her early image.
"I love so many songs on this record, but I really was ready for a Miranda song like the 'Kerosene' days. 'Fastest Girl' I wrote with Angaleena (Presley, her cohort in Pistol Annies), so it's obviously close to my heart because I wrote it with a friend. 'Over You,' I wrote it with Blake, so it's kind of this trend going of putting out singles that I write with people. I'm excited for the video. I love doing it every night. It's an anthem song and it's so much fun and it seems like a good summer song."
Her last single, "Over You," doesn't seem like a prototypical summer song, but the song inspired by the death of Shelton's brother recently became her latest No. 1 regardless. And she won a buckle for best female video at Wednesday's CMTs for it.
"Everything about 'Over You,' when it was written and the way it was written and writing it with my husband, there's just so many things that are serendipitous around that song, it was like it was meant to be. There won't ever be another song like 'Over You' for me in my career, probably. It doesn't happen very often for anyone, just for how everything fell into place. So I'm just glad that other people felt it too. When write something so personal, you're not sure if it will translate, but I feel it really translated to fans, and it's so cool to celebrate that."
She and Shelton are also still celebrating the end of a successful second season of The Voice. "I'm obsessed with it," she said. "This year I was a mentor, but usually I'm like 'Don't tell me because I like to just watch it as a fan.' I was shocked when Jermaine Paul picked Blake for his coach because I didn't think he would, but it was an amazing team together. .. Blake is representing all of us as a genre on national television every week. And it makes us look awesome. I think he's bringing a lot of new fans to country music, so we're really proud. We get really close to the people on his team. We've adopted, basically, Dia from last year, and Rae-Lyn practically lives with us now. So it's kind of just one big family."
The night before, we caught up with Lambert's side-project group, Pistol Annies, right before they performed "Takin' Pills" on the CMT Awards telecast—a song that celebrates, in a humorous way, smoking, drinking, and pill-popping, respectively, with one of those bad habits assigned to each Annie. It might have been a tougher sell for one of the country awards shows on the major broadcast networks, but it's classic country.
"Well, everybody has a vice," Lambert told us. "Most people just don't talk about 'em." She said the song is in the spirit of Loretta Lynn, their patron saint. "We get off on being inappropriate," Angaleena Presley said. "Loretta would have made it a single, so we can too," added Ashley Monroe.
Presley just got married. "I'm real happy. I love my husband," she said, as Lambert pointed out the hubby, who just happens to be her tour manager.
That leaves Monroe as Single Annie. Well, not entirely single. "I have a boyfriend," she assured us. "I'm in love, but I ain't got a ring. Not yet."
"Get on the ball, Johnny!" yelled Lambert, encouragingly.
The Annies have plenty of plans: "We're touring all summer with me," Lambert said—which is to say, the Annies do a mini-set in the middle of Lambert's headlining set each night—"and then in September we're doing a just-Pistol-Annies tour, doing some fairs and festivals and casinos as well... and then in October we're making a new album." In other words, "Hell on Heels" won't be freezing over anytime soon.
