Miranda Lambert just detailed her time spent with Dolly Parton and the advice she got from the late country music legend.
She recalled receiving some treasured tips from the great Parton, to whom she was compared early on as “another blonde beauty who was once underestimated.”
In fact, they met while recording a duet version of Parton’s Dumb Blonde for the soundtrack to the 2018 comedy-drama film Dumplin’, when the queen of country offered some wise words Lambert would never forget.
“I walk in the studio and there are cameras and lights and everything, and Dolly grabs my shoulders, says ‘nice to meet you’ and gives me a hug,” she told The Independent. “Then she turns me around and says, ‘Always find your good light first.’”
Lambert admitted that she uses that advice literally, whenever she finds herself under a spotlight, but more importantly in the everyday, “If I’m in a mood or someone pisses me off.”
The music star has currently been kicking down the doors of country music for a long time, with great success.
Lambert spent most of the 2010s as one of the few women flying the flag in a scene dominated by male acts like Tim McGraw, Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith and Brad Paisley.
Now, she’s proven instrumental in the rise of country newcomers like singer Ella Langley– with whom she wrote the year’s biggest hit, Choosin’ Texas.
Thanks to that song, particularly, more two decades into her career Lambert’s own music is being discovered by a whole new generation of fans.
She also follows Parton’s example in remaining steadfastly tight-lipped about politics, while being a vocal supporter of the LGBT+ community (she threw a drag brunch earlier this year in Nashville to champion queer artists and performers).
“I feel if we could be a little more like Dolly, and be good, be kind, be thoughtful,” she said, with a bit of a sigh.
“You can have a stance on things without preaching it to people, and I also believe that my job as a musician, as a songwriter, is to be an escape. Songs are an escape, that’s a moment for us all to come together… and I just don’t ever think it’s my place to get up there and push my agendas of any other kinds.” Listen to her songs, Miranda Lambert believes, and people will know where she stands. “And I feel like Dolly did that well too.”
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