Country star Miranda Lambert says a fan meet-and-greet in Indianapolis turned into one of the most emotional encounters of her career, after a woman told her that Lambert’s 2007 song “Gunpowder & Lead” gave her the courage to shoot an abusive partner — and that she was acquitted.
Lambert described the moment on the “And the Writer Is…” podcast, recalling that the woman skipped the usual photo request. “She’s like, ‘I just want to tell you that I finally had enough, and that song gave me the courage, and I did shoot him — and I got off,'” Lambert said. “I was like, ‘OK,'” she continued. “She was dead serious. She was hardcore. And then we cried together.”
“Gunpowder & Lead,” co-written by Lambert with Heather Little, appeared on Lambert’s album “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and tells the story of a woman confronting an abusive partner after his release from jail. Lambert said the track has drawn intense reactions from fans for years. “It’s such a huge staple for me in my catalog, just the subject matter, and how I got to that and who I got to write it with, and the stories I’ve heard from women over the years who have come up to me and said, ‘That song saved my life,'” she said. “At some meet-and-greets, I’ve heard some crazy things.”
The Indianapolis encounter, she said, hit differently. “When someone tells you something like that about something you wrote that didn’t actually happen to you, it’s very intense,” Lambert said. “She was like third in line at the meet-and-greet, and I had like 85 people, and I was like, ‘I’m going to need a minute.’ I needed to take a breath, hug her and recover from what that is.”
Lambert said the exchange reshaped how she thinks about the song. “I realized at that moment this isn’t just me onstage playing a character or me playing a character in the studio,” she said. “This is a serious song we wrote about a serious matter, and it’s touching people and affecting their lives.”
A song rooted in personal history
Lambert has previously said the song draws on experiences from her childhood. In a 2014 interview with SPIN Magazine, she said her parents occasionally sheltered abused women and their children in their home. “When I was younger, my parents took in abused women and children, and their kids, to live with us from time to time, and I saw firsthand what abuse can do to a family, multiple times,” she said.
“That song is from a real place — it’s not just a girl writing about something where she has no idea what the subject is about,” Lambert added. “I wrote it with a girl who experienced abuse herself.”
Lambert said the purpose behind the song goes beyond commercial success. “I do think I’m trying to create awareness, and not in a preachy way,” she said. “You can have millions of ticket sales and awards and records sold and whatever, but when somebody tells you a record saved their life… that’s why I do this.”
