Miranda Lambert dials up the Wild West imagery in a brand new song. “If I Was a Cowboy” is peppered with references to wanted posters, tumbleweeds, and six-guns, and is the country singer’s first solo single since “Settling Down,” off the Wildcard album.
“If I was a cowboy, I’d be wild and free / rolling around these towns like tumbleweeds,” Lambert sings in the chorus, dreaming of wide-open expanses and endless opportunity and boasting about her rebellious streak: “You thought the west was wild / but you ain’t saddled up with me.”
The payoff line comes with a gender-flipping wink — “If I was a cowboy, I’d be the queen,” she proclaims.
“If I Was a Cowboy” is Lambert’s first new solo music in two years. In February, she teamed up with Elle King for King’s drinking-and-dancing song “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” and collaborated with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall for The Marfa Tapes, a stripped-down album that dropped in May. In August, she worked with DJ Telemitry (the Nashville producer Jesse Frasure) to produce the first remix of her career, the Wildcard track “Tequila Does.”
Lambert wrote “If I Was a Cowboy” with Frasure. “We met doing the remix of ‘Tequila Does’ and he and I just got together one afternoon for a write and this is what came out of it,” Lambert said in a statement. “It’s funny, he’s a Detroit boy and I’m an East Texan, but somehow we wrote a song about the Wild West together.”
Lambert is the most nominated woman in CMA Awards history: She’ll compete in three categories at the November 10th ceremonies in Nashville and has two more live dates scheduled for the year, including an appearance at the Tortuga Music Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on November 12th.