Miranda Lambert has broken her long silence about her 2015 split from Blake Shelton.
The country star, 42, spoke candidly about the divorce during an Oct. 27 appearance on the “And The Writer Is…” podcast, calling the period “a really not fun time” in her life. She described the unique pressures of navigating a breakup while in the spotlight, noting the difficulty of going through it “especially on tour, especially in the middle of a very public career.”
Lambert admitted that the experience “sucks for anyone, especially in the public eye.” Yet she also revealed how she transformed that personal turmoil into artistic fuel. After moving back to Nashville to restart her life as a single woman, she threw herself into her craft with unusual intensity.
“I got divorced, and that sucks for anyone, especially in the public eye,” she said. “Especially on tour, especially in the middle of a very public career.”
The “Bluebird” singer explained that she gathered her network of songwriter friends and channeled her emotions directly into her work.
“When I moved back in 2015, I gathered up all of my friends and relationships from all of the previous years and just used it,” Lambert shared. “Used the misery.”
That creative burst proved extraordinarily productive. Lambert estimated she wrote approximately 75 songs during that period, with her collaborators joining her on what she described as a shared emotional journey.
“I used what I was living, and my friends went on that journey with me—friends being songwriters,” she continued. “And I think I wrote 75 songs.”
She credited the difficult time with accelerating her growth as an artist, saying she developed as both a vocalist and songwriter by drawing on her “raw emotion.”
The podcast remarks mark a rare instance of Lambert directly addressing the divorce that dominated country music headlines nearly a decade ago. She and Shelton, 48, announced their separation on July 20, 2015, ending four years of marriage and a decade-long relationship.
Shelton himself commented on the speed of the legal process during a September 2015 appearance on the “Bobby Bones Show.” He noted that the absence of children and the existence of a prenuptial agreement streamlined matters considerably.
“Miranda and I didn’t have any kids, and we had a prenuptial agreement, whatever we had,” he said at the time. “Once we filed for divorce, it was over in, like, I think it was a nine or 10-day waiting period until it’s over.”
Both singers have since rebuilt their personal lives. Shelton married pop star Gwen Stefani, 55, in July 2021. Lambert found her next chapter with Brendan McLoughlin, a former New York City police officer whom she met while he was working security on the set of “Good Morning America.”
The couple wed in January 2019. Lambert has praised her husband’s temperament in interviews, telling Taste of Country last year that “he is very patient and he is very chill,” She added with a laugh that he wasn’t always so laid-back when they first met, given his background in law enforcement in New York.
“He wasn’t as chill back then, because he was fresh out of New York City,” she said. “Like, they just roll. I mean they’re hardcore.”
Lambert and Shelton have generally maintained privacy about the specific reasons behind their split, a discretion that has largely held through the years despite their continued prominence in the genre.
The “And The Writer Is…” podcast episode featuring Lambert’s reflections was released last month.