By chance, Miranda Lambert and Jesse Frasure ended up co-writing a song together for the first time after the two had started working on a remix of her 2019 song “Tequila Does.” Extending their collaboration, the two ventured into the wild west with Lambert playing the cowboy.
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“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,” said Lambert 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.”
The Meaning: Riding Off
Right from the beginning verse of “If I Was a Cowboy,” Lambert summons the imagery of the wild west and paints a picture of a day in the life of a cowboy, riding out, into the unknown.
Ridin’ off in the sunset, blue eyes under my Stetson
A little lady on the front porch wishin’ my heart would start settling
Big iron hips with the holsters
I’d be lookin’ mighty fine on a poster
Wanted by the law but the laws don’t apply to me
Through the chorus, the song centers around the larger landscape of a cowboy’s way of life, loving them and leaving them and living wild and free.
If I was a cowboy, I’d be wild and free
Rollin’ around these towns like tumbleweeds
I’d be a legend at loving and leaving
Nipping on a whiskey and numbing up my feelings
You thought the West was wild but you ain’t saddled up with me
If I was a cowboy, I’d be the queen
‘Palomino’
Before releasing the single, Lambert teased the song with a clip of the video, featuring her wearing a white shirt, a red handkerchief on her head, and winking at the camera with her glass of whiskey.
Produced by Jon Randall and Luke Dick, “If I Was a Cowboy” was a lead single off Lambert’s ninth album, Palomino, which marked her first new solo music since her 2019 album, Wildcard, and single “Settling Down.” Palomino also features a cover of Mick Jagger‘s 1993 song “Wandering Spirit” and a collaboration with The B-52s for “Music City Queen.”
Prior to Palomino—which was also Lambert’s final release with Sony Music Nashville before leaving the label after 19 years—she had several previous collaborations, including The Marfa Tapes with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall in 2021.
“This whole record is about roaming and a journey and being in love and finding yourself,” Lambert recently told American Songwriter. “I don’t know if it was life imitating art or art imitating life, but everything just aligned.”
Sittin’ pretty on the prairie, baby
I’m your Huckleberry, let me hold ya
This six-gun sugar’s got a hairpin trigger, like I told ya
And this dove never really gets lonesome
I never begged, never borrowed but I stole some
Wanted by the law but the laws don’t apply to me, baby
If I was a cowboy, I’d be wild and free
Rollin’ around these towns like tumbleweeds
I’d be a legend at loving and leaving
Nipping on a whiskey and numbing up my feelings
You thought the West was wild but you ain’t saddled up with me
If I was a cowboy, I’d be the queen
Read our entire cover story interview with Miranda Lambert, which appeared in the May/June issue of American Songwriter, HERE.
Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images
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