Baggage Claim- What it really means.
In her hit single “Baggage Claim,” Miranda Lambert sings about the kind of luggage you wish would get lost. “I have been dragging around your sensitive ego,” she tells an ex-friend or lover -- soon concluding, with characteristic swagger, that she’ll “drop your troubles off at the conveyor belt/I hand you a ticket to go get it yourself.” Mr. Needy is left doing loops on the suitcase carousel while Lambert’s rocking out in the unloading zone. With the release of Four the Record, Miranda comes bearing some baggage of her own – the precious kind, well-earned over the course of three highly loved (and unanimously platinum) prior albums. Her accolades could fill a whole set of trunks. So when “Baggage Claim” was released to country radio stations in August, Lambert realized she was something she’d never expected to become: an automatic add.She’s thrilled with her own radio success because, prior to Revolution, she’d never even had a top 5 single. Two years ago, as that make-or-break effort was prepared for takeoff, you didn’t have to listen far to hear whispers that maybe those same cutting-edge qualities that made her an award-show queen and press darling would be the kiss of death when the commercial rubber hit the road. But in 2010, she finally earned the triple crown – love from industry orgs, critics, and radio – when she bagged her first three No. 1 singles with “White Liar”, “The House That Built Me” and “Heart Like Mine.” Naturally, with “Baggage Claim” burning a kerosene-fueled trail up the chart in advance of Four the Record, she approached the impending release of this album with a good deal more certainty. Not that anyone would have called her unconfident before now, mind you. But… “I’ve never had an album release coincide with a hit, ever,” she points out, in the midst of her enthusiasm about the success of “Baggage Claim” as a teaser for the new album. “Revolution came out on a single that died in the 30s.” (For the record, that would be “Dead Flowers,” which marked the very last time that programmers were unsure whether to take a chance on Lambert.) “So I’m excited and so thankful. Because I don’t blame the program directors and DJs who used to have to put my songs on and have the listeners go, ‘What the hell is this?’ I am different, and I am a little edgy. But I’ve played so many tours and been on the road so much, I feel like people get me now. Or else they think, ‘She’s not going away, so we might as well just start liking it’,” she laughs.