Miranda Lambert says she and Carrie Underwood earned a ribbon for surviving 2010s country

Miranda Lambert says she and Carrie Underwood should get a ribbon for surviving country music in the 2010s.

The singer made the remark in a clip from her appearance on The New York Times' Popcast posted on Oct. 1, Billboard reported. She described a long stretch when men dominated the format and said she and Underwood were the exceptions who kept going.

Lambert said that when she started out in the early 2000s, she wanted to be known for her songs. She did not want to be known, in her words, for being the pretty girl or for wearing crop tops.

Then came the squeeze. Lambert said there were no other women in country music in the 2010s besides herself and Underwood. She put a number on it: at least seven years when only male artists were coming through.

It is a short list. Lambert and Underwood teamed up for “Somethin’ Bad” in 2014, which reached the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100, the main US singles chart. That duet remains their best-known joint release.

Lambert said the scarcity shaped their working lives. She and Underwood were not playing the same bills, she said, because for so long there were only two women artists working at that level. They only recently saw each other play live, when each visited the other’s Las Vegas residency, a run of shows staged in one venue.

The conversation then turned forward. Lambert said she hopes to support younger female artists coming up now. One recent example is Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas”, which Lambert co-wrote.

Underwood has spoken in similar terms before. In 2018, she dismissed as “BS” the idea that women do not want to hear other women on country radio, in an interview with ABC News.

What makes this stand out is the tone. Lambert framed it less as a complaint and more as survival shared with a peer. Two careers, one thin patch of road, and a ribbon that does not exist but perhaps should.