More than a decade after her divorce from Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert has opened up about their relationship breakdown.
“I got divorced and that sucks for anyone, especially in the public eye, especially on tour, especially in the middle of a very public career, two of us, you know what I mean? It just was a really not fun time,” Lambert, 42, said on the Tuesday, October 27, episode of Ross Golan’s “And the Writer Is…” podcast.
Lambert continued, “I, in the meantime, had moved back to Nashville full-time, and so I dove headfirst into songwriting.” (The country music star had lived with Shelton, 50, in Oklahoma, until their split was announced in 2015.)
Adding that she used her “misery” to create her sixth studio album, The Weight of These Wings, Lambert detailed what happened next. “When I moved back [to Nashville] in 2015, I gathered up all of my friends and relationships from, you know, all of the previous years and just used it, used the misery,” she said.
“I used the staying out too late at honky-tonks. I used what I was living and my friends went on that journey with me, friends being songwriters, and I think I wrote 75 songs in, like, a year. I mean, in, like, the first four months I moved back.”
Lambert and Shelton dated for 10 years and were married for four years after tying the knot in Texas in 2011. A source told Us exclusively at the time that there were “no hard feelings” and the pair simply wanted to “move on as friends, and they are doing just that.”
In the years that followed, Shelton went on to marry fellow musician Gwen Stefani in 2021. For Lambert’s part, she announced in February 2019 that she had secretly married former New York City Police Department officer Brendan McLoughlin one month prior after the duo began dating three weeks before that.
Earlier this year, Lambert and McLoughlin stepped out together for a special night out at the 2026 Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, where Lambert won two awards and performed her track, “Crisco.”
At one stage, McLoughlin was seen leaping to his feet and clapping for his lady when Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” which Lambert co-wrote and produced, won Single of the Year.
Lambert said during a 2024 interview with Us that the couple’s dynamic helps her conquer challenges. “He calls me out, and I love that. I need that,” she told Us at the time. “I don’t think it’s healthy that people, especially artists or celebrities, surround themself with yes people. If you surround yourself with a group of people who are honest with you, you’ll go a lot farther, and it’s a lot healthier in the long run.”
