Miranda Lambert changed the entire trajectory of her career and life when she scored her first No. 1 hit on June 12, 2010, but many fans might not be aware that the song wasn’t even meant for her. In fact, it was originally pitched to her ex-husband, Blake Shelton.
Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin wrote “The House That Built Me,” and they worked for a long time to get it right, editing out some lyrics and adding the crucial line,“If I could just come in, I swear I’ll leave / I won’t take nothing but a memory.”
They sent it to Shelton, who at that time was Lambert’s boyfriend. She was present when he listened to it the first time, and the song touched on her personal history so deeply that she began to cry. She asked him if she could have the song to record instead, and the rest is history.
Rarely has a singer ever connected so strongly with a song they did not write, but in Lambert’s case, “The House That Built Me” touched on themes that paralleled a period in her early life when her family was homeless before settling into an old, dilapidated farmhouse that really helped shape her view of the world.
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Her emotional rendition of the song was her fastest-breaking single and gave Lambert her first No. 1 hit on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart, where it stayed for four weeks.
It won CMA Awards for Song and Music Video of the Year, ACM Awards for Song, Single Record and Video of the Year and a Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance, and it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Lambert doing the song justice in retrospect.
Sterling Whitaker is a Senior Writer and Senior Editor for Taste of Country. He focuses on celebrity real estate, as well as coverage of Yellowstone and related shows like 1883 and 1923. He’s interviewed cast members including Cole Hauser, Kelly Reilly, Sam Elliott and Harrison Ford, and Whitaker is also known for his in-depth interviews with country legends including Don Henley, Rodney Crowell, Trace Adkins, Ronnie Milsap, Ricky Skaggs and more.
