You Dummies, Miranda Lambert Changed The Lyrics to “Little Red Wagon” a Long Time Ago

I normally try and avoid this type of celebrity back and forth stupidity, and in fact I’m embarrassed this type of stuff even passes under my nose. But as the sole proprietor of a country music website, it’s one of the rigors of the daily grind of aggregating information and being on top of news. And on a slow news week in country music when the biggest story was Reba McEntire emerging as the new Colonel Sanders, I guess entertainment media had to manufacture something to drive clicks, and that’s exactly what they did by ripping scabs off the old tired tabloid warhorse that is the Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton divorce.

I bit my tongue earlier this week when numerous outlets, including US Weekly, Fox News, E Online, and scores of country music blogs asserted that Miranda Lambert had newly revamped the lyrics to her song “Little Red Wagon” for the recently launched “Livin’ Like Hippies” tour to take a jab at her ex. Lambert was seen on grainy cell phone video replacing the line “I live in Oklahoma” with “I got the hell out of Oklahoma.” Blake Shelton is an Oklahoma native and the two lived there during their marriage. Miranda, who is a native of east Texas, hoofed it out to Nashville after the 2015 split.

But of course the only problem with this story is the fact that Miranda Lambert changed those lyrics a long time ago. Here’s a video taken over 10 months prior of Miranda Lambert singing the same damn line, despite US Weekly and Fox News saying the change is brand new. It also doesn’t take into consideration that maybe Miranda Lambert just changed the lyrics because she doesn’t live in Oklahoma anymore and the line is not relevant. But, it probably is a little dig at Blake. It’s just in no way a new one. “Little Red Wagon” wasn’t even written by Lambert. It’s a song originally performed and written by Audra Mae.

But whatever. I get it, drama makes for good attention. But now the media, including Fox News, is making a big deal about how Blake Shelton has now answered Miranda Lambert’s “shade” by singing “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” at Luke Bryan’s Crash My Playa festival in Riviera Maya. “Shelton’s choice to sing ‘All My Exes Live in Texas’ came just one day after his ex went after his home state of Oklahoma,” says Fox News. But of course this is not true since Miranda Lambert has been singing the new line since at least March of 2017.

And Blake Shelton has been singing “All My Ex’s Live In Texas” for years. The old George Strait song has been a mainstay of Shelton’s set lists really since the beginning of his career. Here’s a video of him singing the song during his “Doing It To Country Songs” tour in Fresno uploaded on March 6th, 2017, eight days BEFORE the Miranda Lambert video linked above from a March 2017 Bossier City performance with the changed “Little Red Wagon” lyrics. And to prove the point even further, there are scores of videos of Blake Shelton performing “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” from even before he and Miranda Lambert got divorced, including this one from way back in March of 2011 where he talks lovingly of Miranda Lambert and their engagement before playing the song, and before they were married.

Anyway, I ain’t about drama, y’all. But my journalistic heart can’t sit back and let this fake feud fueled by cellphone footage get dumped on the public without offering a correction based on just a minuscule amount of research and context to help give folks perspective. Was Miranda Lambert throwing some “shade” at Blake Shelton with the lyric change? She probably was. Was Blake Shelton responding by singing “All My Exes”? Probably not. And why is Miranda also being characterized as attacking Oklahoma too when these articles themselves say her shade is aimed at Shelton?

Too often the media doesn’t take into consideration these are actual people with personal lives who they’re trying to pit against each other. There’s plenty of other stuff celebrities do in the public eye that gets ridiculed. There’s no reason to concoct a fake back-and-forth out of thin air.

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