Miranda Lambert’s ‘Postcards From Texas’: All 14 Tracks Ranked

Miranda Lambert returns with her 10th studio album today (Friday, Sept. 13), and in the process, she’s revisiting and celebrating her Lone Star State roots even as her career propels forward, as her new album is her first since signing with Republic Records, in conjunction with Big Loud, earlier this year.

For more than two decades, Lambert has been defiantly and triumphantly carving her own sonic territory, setting herself apart by skillfully writing and recording songs that detail life’s idyllic and messy moments, capturing both blazing zeniths of confidence and hazy shadows of doubt — always with a tumbleweed spirit. The result has been seven Billboard Country Airplay No. 1s, and and seven albums that have reached the pinnacle of the Top Country Albums chart.

On previous albums, this three-time Grammy winner has veered from country’s glam-rock edges to its moody, soulful precipices. But on her latest, she’s in classic Lambert form — though the spunky, something-to-prove edge of her early albums has cemented into a surefooted, calm-yet-keen creative spark, as she bends every note and lyric in her distinct Texas twang.

The sounds emanating from this project’s 14 songs are entrenched with stinging wit and shot through with unadulterated frankness, as Lambert worked at Arlyn Studios in Austin, co-producing the album with longtime collaborator Jon Randall. On her latest, Lambert and her collaborators etch detailed imagery of the neon-lit honky-tonks, homey back porches, pastures and stretches of open spaces that embody where the album was created.

Many of the songs here center on loving and leaving, acknowledging free-spirit ways, while it’s understood that allegiances to country music and the Lone Star State are likely to outlast just about everything else.

“I have not made a record in Texas since I was 18, my little independent album, so this is full circle – coming back home to the root, to kind of start fresh with a new label and sound and some new band members I haven’t played with,” Lambert said via a release before the album’s drop. “Being back home and really remembering why I love country music, it’s already leaning way more country which I love.”

Billboard ran through Postcards From Texas upon its arrival on streaming services, ranking all 14 tracks from the project below.