Miranda Lambert Says ‘The House That Built Me’ Is ‘Everybody’s Song’

Larisha Paul
·2 min read
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Miranda Lambert - Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images
Miranda Lambert - Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images

For Miranda Lambert, creating music is all about embracing every emotion and experience life has to offer. It’s an ethos she’s extended beyond the studio, taking it into consideration even when she’s on stage performing for thousands who find connectivity through shared experiences. One of the most moving moments of her live show is the inevitable performance of her 2010 hit “The House That Built Me,” a song that Lambert described in a recent sit-down with Tamron Hall as “everybody’s song.”

“I had a really good friend who played with my band for forever — for 22 years — Scotty Wray and we lost him last year,” Lambert told Hall. “But he said the most pointed thing I didn’t think of when he heard that song.” The singer recalled Wray telling her: “I didn’t have that house, and I wish I did.”

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“I was thinking it was everybody’s story because they all had their dogs in their backyard and the handprints on the stairs,” she added. “And he said, ‘I wish I had a house that built me.’ I never even thought about it that way. Every person in the room either wishes they had that or did, and I feel like that’s where the emotion comes up. And that’s when you know you’ve done your job. It’s when people cry, you know, as a songwriter, that’s kind of part of it.”

Lambert recorded “The House That Built Me” nearly seven years after it was originally written by songwriters Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas. “If somehow this song made people feel less alone in their aching and longing for home, I’m thankful,” Shamblin told Billboard in 2019. “It’s becoming the world’s song, and I’m grateful.” It has been said that the song landed in Lambert’s lap when a demo version was originally sent to her then-boyfriend Blake Shelton. Driving around Oklahoma with Lambert in the passenger seat, Shelton urged her to record the song after seeing the emotional reaction it evoked in her.

“I’ve finally, after all these years, learned how to not cry,” Lambert told Hall of performing the track. “I try really hard because they worked really hard on my face.” Still, the musician sees her live shows as an important extension of the music itself. “It’s all stems from the music,” she added. “The way that I’ve been so truthful in music and just told the good, bad, and ugly, I feel like is why these things can be an extension of what that music is because it is my story.”

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