Miranda Lambert - The Weight of These Wings

Miranda Lambert
The Weight of These Wings
2016
Spotify

So I avoided this record last year, because over an hour and thirty minutes of runtime is just insane, especially for a Country Pop Star like Miranda Lambert. This is not the 60s and a double album in the world of streaming doesn't even really make sense unless you are trying to get some kind of concept across. Miranda is not doing that, instead she is still going with the same female empowerment song, followed by a love song and followed by a heart break song formula she has always stuck to. You are not going to hear things that will blow you away lyrically or really even sonically because she sticks with the formula quite tight. One wrinkle is that occasionally she will throw in some funkier sounds like on "Vice" to keep you interested, but they are ankle deep at best and serve more keep the song from being utterly boring. "Smoking Jacket" also has this sultry vibe to it but the lyrics are really unsexy and plain. Perhaps not wanting to shock her fan base "Smoking Jacket" SHOULD sound like a Prince track, but instead it sounds about as sexy as a Megan Trainor joint. "Pushin' Time" however is the kind of song she should be singing. It is steeped in Country, yet beautiful and rich giving you the chills everytime she opens her mouth. She is so much better when she is haunting you rather than enticing you, it's simply what she is better at and what she should always be doing.

Even the upbeat songs are just ok, and because there are so many of them it is hard for one to really standout amongst the bunch. This album was written and recorded during a very public breakup with Blake Shelton, which could explain the mass of music, but The Weight of These Wings could have been so much more direct and so much more cutting if it was edited to be so. Lambert never really gets her hands around her thoughts and thus we drift track to track never really hitting the solid point this album so desperately needs. The record is certainly about moving on, and Lambert really champions that in a nice way, but are these ideas that we haven't heard before, is she really giving us something new? It really doesn't seem like it despite the occasional flash of greatness. There was clearly something that Lambert needed to get of her chest with this record, and this was the only way she could do it, however that does not justify some of the more egregious mistakes of this record. Listen to a few of the better tracks, but I'll go ahead and say there is zero need to sit through this whole thing.

5.2 out of 10