NEW YORK — Dig out your roller skates. Pair them with a cowboy hat. Miranda Lambert has officially entered her disco chapter. “Crisco,” the country star’s 11th studio album, is a collection of boogie-forward tracks, buoyed by sweeping strings and what sounds like a wink from the dance floor. It’s out Friday. “I’ve spent a lot of my career with fiery songs and heartbreak songs and this record just has a lot of joy on it, and I think that’s just where I am right now in life, too,” Miranda says. The title track is almost a mission statement: “Baby, we’ve been cookin’ with Crisco/Ain’t we mixin’ country and disco/Stir it around, give it a spin/And it’s a rhinestone world we’re livin’ in.” “I’ve just never explored that before. I really am a Merle Haggard girl, you know what I mean? I just love three chords and the truth,” says Lambert. “I just felt like I, maybe at this point, earned the creative freedom to try something fun and try something different.” Lambert has reasons to be smiling The album release caps a special few months that include getting seven Country Music Association Awards nominations, a disco ball-filled performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards that got attendees up and boogying, and making history as co-writer of the crossover-smash “Choosin’ Texas.” That tune sung by Ella Langley has gone six times platinum, been crowned Billboard’s official 2026 Song of the Summer and helped her become the only woman to simultaneously hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. It was just named the longest-running No. 1 hit in the U.S. “We never would have thought just sitting there, on a back porch with a couple of beers and guitars, writing a country song, that it would take over like it has,” Lambert says. “I’m thrilled that ‘Choosin’ Texas’ is a country song and the world is loving it. Like that makes me happy. I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to country music so that alone is like so much happiness for me.” Lambert and Langley wrote “Choosin’ Texas” with Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor. It’s a song exploring what it feels like when someone is falling out of love with you and Lambert can only guess why America has fallen so in love with it. “It kind of feels like something fresh, but something you’ve also heard before. When you hear it, you’re like, ‘I kind of want to sing along to this, even though it’s the first time you heard it.’ You know what I mean?” Lambert co-produced Langley’s album “Dandelion,” the first time she’s produced another artist, something she says she enjoyed. Langley returns the favor by being featured on the swaggering opening “Crisco” song “Snakeskin Boots.” “I think the reason that we are drawn to each other is because I see a lot of my young self in her,” Lambert says of Langley. “She’s definitely a pistol. She’s fiery. She knows exactly what she wants. She’s a true artist and songwriter and she’s an inspiring person to be around.” Lambert also has good news about another fellow country artist, squashing any lingering beef she had with Kacey Musgraves. The two collaborated on “Horses and Divorces” — “Maybe we’re more alike than we think,” they sing — on Musgraves’ new “Middle of Nowhere” album. Miranda points to the “crazy grind of this business” for prompting ebbs and flows in their relationship and the stress during “early stages of your career, trying to really plant your feet in the ground, plant your stake in the ground, and say, ‘This is my spot.’” “Sometimes it gets tricky when you’re navigating that with other female artists and it was really cool to just come together and talk about it and it’s, as we say, whiskey under the bridge now.” ‘Crisco’ and how disco and country fused this time “Crisco” came to life after she and Chris Stapleton wrote and recorded the lovely “A Song To Sing,” their version of “Islands in the Stream,” which earned two Grammy Award nominations. “We wrote this song a few years ago and it really opened up my mind to exploring different sounds. I think it set us on the path to explore more and got me really curious about parts of country music I hadn’t explored yet, which eventually inspired the entire record,” she says. The video features Lambert and Stapleton in matching red suits at a roller rink. If you look carefully, you’ll see she’s wearing a pair of Dolly Parton’s hoop earrings lent out by the late superstar and he’s got on a Kenny Rogers necklace. “I feel like I’ve got to thank her a little bit for this record because that song, that video, that whole day, having a little piece of her around me all day, definitely inspired me for this whole project.” Grammy Award-winning songwriter Natalie Hemby, who has cut some 40 songs with Lambert over 20 years collaborating, co-wrote and played on five tracks this time, including “Snakeskin Boots.” “Every record has just been completely different from the next, but I would say this is the most fun era that I’ve had, as far as writing for a project of hers,” says Hemby. “Her star is just shining so bright, as big as Texas, if you will.” Miranda says country music is in a great spot right now, reminding her of the 1990s when there was something for everyone and a lot of female artists. “There is finally room for everyone,” she says. “We’re not fighting for like only 30 spots on the chart. And people find music all different kinds of ways now. That has allowed for there to be all kinds of voices out there within our genre.” Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press
