By now, every man, woman and child knows that you just cannot, under any circumstances, drink and drive.
But that doesn’t exactly make for a compelling song title, does it?
So leave it to Miranda Lambert to give that warning a brand new spin. That’s what she has done with her brand new collaboration with Maren Morris called “Way Too Pretty for Prison.”
LISTEN HERE.
On Sunday afternoon (Aug. 25), she posted on Instagram that the new tune would be released at midnight. And I’m guessing all of her fans basically just counted down the hours until it was time.
And since country music is always better when there’s a story to it, this one has that in abundance. Mostly because of the backstory behind the song. It was inspired by a night of good wine and good women at Lambert’s house, and in a recent radio interview, she said the idea came to her when she was saying goodbye to Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild.
“I always tell all of my friends leaving, ’Don’t leave if you’ve been drinking, because you’re too pretty for prison.’ So, thanks Karen, for sharing that wine bottle with me and for taking an Uber,” Lambert said, adding, “I knew from the second we were writing it that I would love to have Maren on it. It popped in my head right away before the song was even done. So, I asked her to come in and sing on it. It’s such a girl anthem.”
Lambert wrote the song with the Love Junkies — songwriters Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna and Liz Rose — and it will be Track No. 6 on Lambert’s upcoming Wildcard album, due out Nov. 1. This is the first time Lambert and Morris have recorded a song together.
McKenna posted about the song on Sunday as well, agreeing that Lambert and Morris are way way WAY too pretty for prison.
Lambert is certainly not the first country artist to have a prison song. Blake Shelton had one so popular he named his restaurant chain after it. Eric Church had one about not just prison, but the actual execution of a death-row inmate. And Tim McGraw cut one of the very best, but it was never a radio single.
But most of the older doin’ time songs deal with being in prison as opposed to finding new incentives to stay out. Like Brandy Clark did with her 2013 debut song, “Stripes,” that she wrote with the ACM songwriter of the year Shane McAnally and Matt Jenkins.
In that one, Clark’s reason not to commit a crime is that she hates stripes. And orange ain’t her color.
