Folks have added incentive to do what’s right in a tight Southern community hungry for local gossip (“Famous in a Small Town”).
Throughout Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Lambert plays the part of a promiscuous, vengeful lush. On the title track she leaves her gun in the car but goes berserk in a bar where her old boyfriend has a new woman on his arm. Her response to a lover’s abusiveness is to blow him away on “Gunpowder & Lead” (“Gonna load my shotgun, wait by the door and light a cigarette”). That track (which ends with a shotgun blast) and others model irresponsible drinking. Needing a thirst-quencher during a 100-mile trek, the singer plans to drink and drive but can’t find a six-pack in a “Dry Town.” Romantically, she’s reckless and promiscuous, using a one-night stand as a Band-Aid for heartache (“Easy From Now On”) and, without conscience, leaving destruction in her wake on “Down” and “Guilty in Here.” The latter says, “I’ve made a point of not mixing love and pleasure … Whatever became of all the boys who only want one thing?” Her only regret about cavorting with a married man who eventually returns to his wife is that she should have been “More Like Her.”
Like a tornado in a trailer park, this irresponsible disc wreaks moral havoc. Lambert glamorizes casual sex, maliciousness, cigarettes, adultery, alcohol (at 65 mph no less) and murder. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the pedal-steel equivalent of gangsta rap.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
