Miranda Lambert's Post-Divorce Transformation Can't Go Unnoticed

When Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton first got together, they seemed like a match made in country music heaven. They hail from neighboring states, both love animals, and are obviously musically gifted. After years of dating, Lambert and Shelton got engaged in 2010, and by 2011 they were married, making their romance seem like even more of a rustic fairy tale. And for a while, their marriage seemed like just that. The duo honeymooned in Mexico and collaborated on music, and Lambert helped Shelton with some of his other work. But what really happened between Lambert and Shelton was far from enchanting, and in 2015, the couple announced that they were headed for divorce.

Since getting divorced, Lambert's life has looked a lot different than it did while she was married. Although there have been signs that Lambert hasn't fully moved on from her divorce, there's also plenty of evidence to suggest that she's completely divested herself of that relationship. Take a closer look at Miranda Lambert's post-divorce transformation.

Some say that finding someone new is the best way to get over heartbreak, and it seems that Miranda Lambert at least tested that theory. Shortly after her divorce from Blake Shelton, the country queen started dating Anderson East, a fellow musician. The two met at one of East's concerts, and their relationship flourished from there. A year into dating, it seemed that their relationship was more than just a rebound for Lambert. "She wants to get married again and have children soon. That has been an open conversation between her and Anderson. He wants the same," a source told E! News at the time, adding that Lambert's friends thought the two were a great match.

Unfortunately for Lambert and East, cracks in their foundation started to become apparent. About two years into their relationship, East hinted in an interview with InStyle that perhaps not all was right between them. "It's always difficult to be a traveling musician and still keep things together. Understanding is definitely a huge factor," he said, per People. Months after that interview, Lambert and East broke up. The singer didn't comment publicly on her breakup, but sources claimed that there was potential for them to get back together. Ultimately, though, that didn't happen.

Miranda Lambert was a busy musician while she was still married to Blake Shelton, and she became an even busier musician after her divorce. In 2016, Lambert announced that she was going on the "Highway Vagabond Tour," a winter tour with stops mostly across the United States. The country crooner brought along Aubrie Sellers and Old Dominion as her opening acts.

Lambert didn't just announce a tour in 2016 — she also released a new album, "The Weight of These Wings." The singer had yet to address her divorce from Shelton — through her music or otherwise — and this album provided her commentary. "I just didn't need to talk about the record. If you want to hear my side of the story or my opinion of what happened, it's all on there. There's no mystery anymore — take from it what you will," Lambert, who opted against promotion for the album, told Billboard. Lambert knew what she wanted from the recording process. "I walked in with guns blazing. I just knew one thing: I didn't want a breakup record," she said. "I was like, 'Let's feel it all.' I was ready to have the days where I can't even stand up and the days where I'm celebrating."

Some get haircuts after breakups — others get tattoos. While there are details about Miranda Lambert that some don't know, it's well-known that she has a collection of tattoos across her body, and she added one not long after her divorce to symbolize resilience. "​​I went through some [tough] things, especially 2015 was a really hard year of being in this industry and being a woman. I was like, 'I'm going to figure it out. I've got a wild card up my sleeve. I can do this.' And so I got the wild card up my sleeve, and it's a queen of hearts [tattoo]. She's looking both ways to make sure that I don't get run over," Lambert shared in an interview with Us Weekly.

Lambert's tattoo joined several others that she got after major milestones. For example, in honor of her first ever gold record, Lambert got a pair of pistols with wings crossing each other on the inside of one of her arms. She also has the logo of her charity foundation, MuttNation, on her foot, which she got after the organization raised its first $500,000.

Per reports, Miranda Lambert's divorce from Blake Shelton wasn't the headache that some celebrity divorces are. Though some suggest that Lambert might never forgive Shelton, the two had signed a prenuptial agreement, making for a process as quick and painless as it can be. In the divorce, Lambert reportedly got to keep the house in Nashville that the duo had owned together. But that didn't mean that she wanted to live there. Not long after her divorce, Lambert bought a new place outside of Nashville. The house she bought sits on 400 acres of land and set her back $3.4 million. The property features two small cabins, horse stables, a lake filled with fish, and plenty of outdoor living space.

Although Lambert is a famous singer with plenty of money and space to live how she wants, she keeps things lowkey, especially since getting remarried (more on that later). In an interview with Us Weekly, Lambert dished on what her day-to-day life at home looks like. "We're pretty chill. When we're off work, I'm in my patio hang vibe." According to Lambert, she and her husband enjoy listening to music together in their downtime. "He loves what he calls 'happy hour music' — Matchbox Twenty and Goo Goo Dolls. So we have different tastes, but we'll sit there for hours and listen. Sometimes I say to him, 'We kind of live on a date,' which is pretty awesome," Lambert said.

Initially after her divorce, Miranda Lambert had a few relationships with new men, but she didn't stay committed to anyone for too long. Three years later, in 2018, the singer revealed in an interview that she was single and happy about it, adding that she was using all she had learned about love to create new music. "Love is a hard road sometimes and it's been a roller-coaster ride for me, but I'm definitely thankful for all the ups and downs because I've had some really good songs come out of it. You've got to take the bad parts and put them on paper and then move on to the happy parts," Lambert told The Tennessean (via USA Today).

Lambert might've been single, but she wasn't alone. The singer spent much of her time during that era collaborating with friends, particularly the women from her band, Pistol Annies. Lambert said that the music they were writing at the time was born out of honest conversations with each other about life and all that accompanies it. "It's all of things that women do and those conversations sometimes involve tears and those tears become songs. The joy when we laugh and giggle all night, those become songs I think that's important because we want women to hear us and know they're not alone in whatever they're doing," she said.

Miranda Lambert didn't stay single for long. In late 2018, the country star met a New York City police officer named Brendan McLoughlin while performing with her band, Pistol Annies, on "Good Morning America." "My girlfriends, the Annies, saw him and knew I might be ready to hang out with someone. They invited him to our show behind my back. They plucked him for me," Lambert told the New York Times. Lambert's relationship with McLoughlin progressed quickly, and by January 2019, the two were married. The couple didn't publicize their relationship or their wedding, leaving the public to find out they were after they had wed.

Lambert was very sure of her decision to marry McLoughlin, even though their relationship moved quickly (one of the red flags some have mentioned in Lambert and McLoughlin's relationship). "I feel like I've been through enough in my life to know what I don't want, so when I know what I do want I snatch it right up," she said in an interview with People. The star was especially confident in her decision to keep her wedding private. "I was married before, and it was a huge wedding and everything was very public. So was my divorce. I learned then that it's not for everybody else. This is my actual life. With Brendan, I made it a point to keep it as private as I could for as long as I could," she said.

It's not easy for artists to stay on top of their game over a decade into their career, but with some of her post-divorce music, Miranda Lambert proved that it can be done. In 2019, Lambert released the album "Wildcard," and on it was the song "Bluebird," which she released as a single. The single went number one on the country charts, a feat she hadn't reached since 2012, and it earned her Grammy nominations for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. Prior to the song's success, Lambert had accepted that she might not be a chart-topping performer any longer, which made the song's commercial performance that much sweeter. "I'm so thankful that after all these years, I still have a spot," she told Billboard.

"Bluebird" wasn't just important to Lambert because of its success. The song was incredibly meaningful to her — something she knew was special immediately. "It's got this hope to it. It's got a darkness, too, though, but it's also hopeful," Lambert said of the song in a video she shared on YouTube. "It's like a song I've never written before. I'm so proud to be part of it," she said, adding that she started seeing bluebirds around her farm more than ever before after writing the song.

Throughout her post-divorce transition, one thing has remained constant in Miranda Lambert's life — she never stopped creating music. The music itself has changed, though, reflecting where Lambert has been emotionally at different stages in her life. Throughout 2021, Lambert released lots of new music, all of which she worked on with close friends. In May 2021, Lambert released the album "The Marfa Tapes," which she had written and recorded with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall, two longtime collaborators. The project — which paid homage to Marfa, Texas, a place where the three had written lots of music together before — felt to the trio like something they had to release. "[We have] this friendship and that magical place, and we're all from Texas, and we all have the same kinds of influences and grew up on the same kind of music. It felt like all three of us would be really sad if these songs never had a life," Lambert told Rolling Stone.

The end of 2021 brought about the release of Lambert's holiday album with her band, Pistol Annies. Releasing a Christmas album wasn't something Lambert had ever anticipated doing, but after hearing Sia's album "Everyday is Christmas," she was inspired. "It was like, 'Oh, fresh and originals.' That got me loving Christmas music again because it was fresh. It opened my heart," Lambert said to People. The group got together at Lambert's house at Halloween time, but the house was decorated for Christmas, making for a perfect setting to write a holiday album, and the result was the record "Hell of a Holiday."

Miranda Lambert is a great singer, but that's not her only talent. The Grammy winner is also a good cook, and in 2023, she released a cookbook called "Y'all Eat Yet?: Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin' Kitchen" to celebrate everything she's learned from the strong women that have been influential in her life. Lambert first got the idea to release a cookbook during the COVID-19 pandemic. The singer had been sharing cooking challenges with her loved ones during lockdown, and it evolved into the cookbook. "I want this book to be a reminder for people to gather with their girls or whoever, the people that surround them, the ones that lift them up and bring them joy and add to their lives," Lambert told PopSugar of her cookbook.

Lambert had a sense of humor about the fact that she was carrying on the tradition of female country singers releasing cookbooks, but she also sees it as a very natural transition. "Almost all of us have a moment that we talked about in the kitchen. And I think that's because the songs are the truth with a melody and the food is the truth on a plate. And that's just how it goes hand in hand to me," Lambert said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight.

Miranda Lambert spent years of her career with the same record label, releasing nine albums and multiple hit singles, earning loads of awards, and cementing herself as one of the most prominent women in modern country music. But in May 2023, Lambert announced via X, formerly Twitter, that she was embarking on a new musical journey, leaving Sony. "I'm so thankful for our time together and everything they made possible for me, yet I wouldn't be true to myself if I wasn't constantly looking for the next challenge and a new way to stretch my creativity ... I can't wait to see what the next adventure holds," Lambert said of her decision.

It didn't take too long for Lambert to find a new record label. The following year, it was announced that the singer had signed a new deal with Republic Records. "Music is and always will be the thing that drives me, but having a new home has given me a hunger I didn't realize I still had inside me," Lambert said, per Variety. And she had already been hard at work creating new music to release under her new representation. Shortly after the announcement, Lambert released her single "Wranglers," which she said "feels like it could be on the same record as 'Gunpowder & Lead' [her first top 10 country hit, in 2008]; it has that same fury." Months after signing with Republic, Lambert released her tenth studio album, "Postcards From Texas."

There's nothing like a good glow-up after a breakup. Although it's been a decade since her divorce from Blake Shelton as of this publication, the stunning Miranda Lambert is getting the last laugh in the looks department. Despite spending lots of time on tour and outside on her acreage, the star has been aging in reverse. The glo- up could be thanks to a focus on good skincare. "I've learned over the years that it's so important to protect your skin with sunscreen, especially when you're on outdoor stages a lot like I am. Even if I'm not spending a lot of time in the sun, though, I try to remember to apply this every day. They even have some tinted options when you want a little coverage without a full face of makeup," Lambert told Country Living.

Lambert's good looks could also be thanks to confidence she's gained as she's aged. In 2024, Lambert turned 40, and she shared in an interview for the "Tamron Hall Show" that she was looking forward to the milestone birthday. "I guess I'm just more open now to whatever's supposed to come my way. Just sort of a little more aware and less like tunnel vision, because luckily I've worked hard enough to get to where I have reached a lot of my goals, so now I can be a little more free," she said.