Ella LangleyArtist profile →
Miranda Lambert had never recorded with strings until this album, and then she met a producer who lives for them. Crisco, her 11th album, out Friday (Oct. 2) on MCA, trades her usual fire-and-heartbreak country for countrypolitan sweep and glitter-ball disco, with producer Jesse Frasure steering.
It started with a duet. Lambert and Chris Stapleton recorded “A Song To Sing” last year as a nod to the Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton records she loved, and shot the video at a skating rink in Brentwood, Tennessee. “It’s something I’ve never tried before, honestly,” Lambert told Billboard. “I’ve never explored that part of country, even though I love it.” She had planned a short EP, but she and Frasure kept building until it became a full world inspired by countrypolitan and Studio 54.
Read moreElla Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” Passes Mariah Carey for the Longest No. 1 Run in Hot 100 History
The reference points came from a Frasure playlist titled “Miranda-politan,” full of 1960s, ’70s and ’80s classics from Glen Campbell, Ronnie Milsap, the Bee Gees, Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley. The strings are the headline. “I’ve never recorded with strings in my career, which is crazy,” she said. “What the heck was I waiting on?” Parton is all over the record in spirit, and Lambert says so plainly.
Dolly’s all over this, energy-wise.
Miranda Lambert, Billboard
Lambert first met Parton when they sang “Dumb Blonde” together for the 2018 film Dumplin’, and she still carries the first thing Parton said to her: “Honey, find your good light. Always find your good light.” The album closes on “Sunset Marquis,” a tribute to the West Hollywood hotel where she once found a place to feel safe in rock ’n’ roll Los Angeles.
The collaboration everyone will hear first is “Snakeskin Boots,” a western-noir duet with Ella Langley, whose second album, Dandelion, Lambert co-produced. Lambert also co-wrote Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” which recently became the longest-running No. 1 in Hot 100 history and was interpolated on Drake’s “Solar Eclipse” with Don Toliver. Listen to the lyric video below.
The reviews are not unanimous. Rolling Stone says the project is not a stunt, comparing it with the dance-ready turn of Parton’s Heartbreaker in 1978 and calling it “another bold step forward for one of country music’s most adventurous artists.” Pitchfork hears a lush, “spotless” record, but one weighed down by what it calls “swirly-gooey sameness” and “humdrum writing,” and it prefers Lambert at her most feral, as on “Cuttin’ Onions” and “Snakeskin Boots.”
Lambert debuted the title track onstage at the ACM Awards in May; in it she sings, “Ain’t we mixin’ country and disco?” The chart numbers for its first week will show whether the swerve lands with the audience that made “Choosin’ Texas” a record-setter.
- Album
- Crisco (11th studio album)
- Out
- Oct. 2, 2026, on MCA Nashville
- Producer
- Jesse Frasure
- Guests
- Chris Stapleton (“A Song To Sing”), Ella Langley (“Snakeskin Boots”)
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
