Miranda Lambert No Longer Just A Face In The Crowd

All kinds of changes have come for country music’s rising star in the last year – No. 1 songs, six Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music wins, Grammy nominations and performances, and her engagement to Blake Shelton.

Oh, and she cannot go shopping anymore.

“Blake and I both realized, we went Christmas shopping and we can’t ever do that again,” Lambert, 27, said in an interview with The Associated Press last week before a party to celebrate her recent success.

“It’s almost how you can see yourself on TV and you can win awards and you can hear about all the great accolades you’re getting, but then it doesn’t really come into your normal everyday life until you’re somewhere like (the store) Academy and a hundred people all the sudden are crowded around you,” she said.

Lambert can expect her profile to rise again Sunday during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, airing live on CBS from the Staples Center (8 p.m. EST). She’ll perform her poignant hit “The House That Built Me” before the largest audience of her career. She’s up for best country album for Revolution, best female country vocal performance for “House” and best country collaboration on Dierks Bentley’s “Bad Angel” with Jamey Johnson.

“House” also is nominated in the general song of the year category and for best country song, awards that would go to songwriters Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas.

The tear-jerker closely mirrors events in Lambert’s own life, and she says it’s the perfect song to celebrate the wider attention being given to country music.

“I think that country music in general is more popular music now,” Lambert said. “It’s really kind of crossed over as a genre because I think people really know a lot more about it, and pop and rock people are trying to come do country music. So I think it’s just all kind of mushing together, and I love that.”