Miranda Lambert – Baggage Claim (CD Single Review)
Label – Columbia Nashville (P) 2011 Sony Music Entertainment
Release Date – 16 August 2011
Writers – Miranda Lambert, Luke Laird and Natalie Hemby
Time – 3:10
Rating (Out of 10): 8/10
Since her May wedding the current CMA Female vocalist Miranda Lambert regarding her music has clearly not mellowed. The Texan gives her sharp tongue a lashing directed at the characters philandering lover. Lambert co-wrote it with Luke Laird (co-wrote ‘A Little Bit Stronger’ for Sara Evans and ‘Hillbilly Bone’ Blake Shelton) and Natalie Hemby (‘Only Prettier’, ‘White’ Lair’ with Miranda Lambert and co-wrote ‘Play On’ with Laird for Carrie Underwood)
Yes it is the 27 year old singer on the cover though with those cool looking large shades and a fur vest Miranda somewhat resembles celeb Paris Hilton.
The Gunpowder and Lead singer blows a fuse in the first verse. She’s had a bellyful of the trickery, deceit, empty words and the emotional “baggage” that have burdened her. With a swampy Dobro and a groovy, funky acoustic guitar riff which continues throughout Lambert spits out:
“I have been draggin’ around your sensitive ego / Making sure your bags arrive on time / For the dog and pony show / A leather suitcase like a brick / It kind of makes it hard to get a grip / I drop your troubles off at the conveyor built / I hand you a ticket to go get it yourself.”
The suitcase contents are no longer neatly packed but scattered everywhere. It’s over; her significant other is being shoved right out of her life and her home. On this bluesy affair Josh Kelly the brother of Charles from Lady Antebellum gets the call adding some restrained Joe Cocker-like back-up vocals as an angered Lambert dishes out the dirt:
At the baggage claim, you got a lot of luggage in your name, When you hit the ground, check the lost and found, ‘Cause it ain’t my problem now, I can’t carry it on, I’ve got a lot of troubles on my own, It’s all over the yard, in the trunk of the car, I’m packin’ it in so come and get it.
Miranda leaves us in no doubt as why she’s hit the roof delivering the killer lines: “If it ain’t obvious what has set me off today, Behind every woman scorned is a man who made her that way, Go on take your little business trip with that sweet little habit”
The production overall is snappy and the groove registers in the brain. It’s not forced and the sound is tight with some juicy Hammond B organ and edgy electric guitar fills and Miranda adds the right measures of grit. “It’s the grooviest song I’ve ever recorded,” Miranda said. “It makes you want revenge and want to dance all at the same time!”
The singer can do no wrong it seems these days with a #1 album with her side group trio The Pistol Annies and now this song has become her highest debuting single to date with a #33 spot and has quickly climbed the charts. It currently sits at #11 on the Hot Country Charts. The track will be cut #8 on her album FOUR THE RECORD due to be drop on November 1, 2011
Livewire (21 Sept 2011)