RAMBLE ON: "The House That Built Me" by Miranda Lambert

It’s September 28, 2022, and I’m at a Miranda Lambert concert in Las Vegas. If you asked me why, I’m not sure I’d have an answer; I know and like plenty of her songs but not strongly, and I wouldn’t say I really ever cared much about seeing her live. I’m just here on a whim. I probably shouldn’t be in Vegas at all; this trip isn’t exactly spontaneous but it’s not exactly planned either. I don’t know how long I’m staying.

I haven’t been home in weeks. I marked out the month for a long, badly needed vacation, which I spent been mostly on the East Coast. I drove the entire way, cross-country, because I can’t bring my dog on a plane and I don’t feel like getting a sitter. Also I like driving. When I’m driving I can’t look at the Internet, which is where I work. Looking at the Internet is work. I’ve looked at the Internet as little as I could, and it’s improved my mood a lot. The trip has been real; saw friends, saw family, and now I’m on my way back. I picked a route that gave me the option to stop in Vegas if I wanted; I had a lot of fun times there over the past couple years and I want to go back. I should go back. I’m going back. I book the hotel that has the cheapest pet fee and change my GPS’s destination.

As it turns out, the reason this hotel has the lowest pet fee on the Strip (well, technically not on but almost on the Strip) is because of the weird smell. This place sucks. Whatever, I’m not gonna be spending much time in the room, I’m here to enjoy the sights. But no, I’m wrong; I’m wiped after four days of driving, I need to rest. I’ll just relax in the room for a bit. Actually I don’t know if I’m even going out tonight; I’ve got all of tomorrow after all. Maybe even another day afterward. Maybe I won’t go home ever! All that’s at home is work. All I do is work. I don’t want to go home.

My plans for tomorrow are that I mostly just want to hit the blackjack tables. I will probably lose, but it’s like I always say when I’m in Vegas: Money’s not real, and nothing matters. But hold on, if all I wanted to do was lose money I could have done that at the dozen-plus casinos I’ve driven past these last few days. I should see a show. Maybe a chintzy tribute concert, maybe an actual act. Who’s here? Aerosmith; but they’re all like 80 now and I think it’ll probably be sad. A magic show maybe? I see Miranda Lambert’s got a residency. I like her. But she’s not playing tomorrow. She’s only playing tonight, in less than an hour.

Fuck it, I’ve got my second wind. I’m going. I get a cab to Planet Hollywood (Planet Hollywood has a Vegas resort? Planet Hollywood still exists?) as fast as I can.

Miranda is at this point a superstar and a seasoned veteran, but she actually seems kind of nervous; she tells us that this is only her third show here. Other country stars like Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood and Shania Twain have made Sin City their own in recent years, but Miranda’s a different kind of country singer. She’s doing her best to get her Vegas on; she’s got the fancy lighting, the stage show, the pyrotechnics, the glittery outfits. But she's still out of place; she does one costume change and doesn’t talk much to the crowd. Miranda’s appeal has always been her authenticity; you don’t hear any trap beats or lifestyle pandering on her records. I think she’s only doing these shows because the post-COVID touring circuit is a mess; she doesn’t seem to fit here, in the loudest, stupidest city on Earth.

She’s still a pro, of course; the songs are all there and she performs them well. I’m delighted when she pulls out “Drunk and I Don’t Wanna Go Home,” a song I forgot she was on; I haven’t really had time to eat so after just one beer I’m also drunk and don’t wanna go home. At one point she puts on a fringed pink jacket that shoots pyro from the sleeves. The crowd loves it. I’m surprised how old the audience is, which I shouldn’t be; I’m at a country music concert and I’m in Vegas, both of which attract old people like flies to shit. I guess I’m surprised because Miranda is still a young woman in her prime compared to most of the acts in this town (in addition to Aerosmith, I could’ve also seen Rod Stewart or Barry Manilow), but like all of us, she’s not as young as she used to be. When she sings “Kerosene,” bits of the music video play on the screen behind her. She looked so different then; she looks so different now. That song’s almost 20 years old. These are the observations in my head when the lights go down for what is Miranda’s probably most beloved song, “The House That Built Me.”

I have to be honest here: “The House That Built Me” has never done much for me. This makes me a stone-hearted outlier among country fans, who instantly decided that it was one of the best country songs of all time, perhaps one of the best songs of any genre. A quick look on Spotify reveals a dozen covers that already exist, including one from old-timer Tanya Tucker. People weep for this song, including Miranda herself the first time she heard it; it had been sent as a demo to her then-boyfriend Blake Shelton but when she heard it she immediately took it for herself. (I’ll say this for the song; the thought of a lunkhead like Blake Shelton touching it makes me want to puke. Shelton will have his own Vegas residency soon, I’m sure.)

In the song, the narrator knocks on a stranger’s door and asks apologetically to look around, explaining that this was her childhood home. Memories burst out of every wall and room; handprints on the steps, a beloved dog buried in the backyard; the work her father did to turn it into the home her mother always wanted. It’s not hard to understand why people feel so much for this song; I never have though. The writers say it’s about how “houses hold memories,” which is too sentimental for me. I myself saw my childhood home during this trip, with my parents still in it. I went to see my family, not the house, which to me is just a house; it didn’t build me. On this trip I also visited friends in New York, where I lived many years; there were people I wanted to see but not really places I wanted to go. That city is awful and I don’t miss it. If there’s any place I have sentimental attachments to it’s the gaudy tourist trap I’m in right now. I’ve had a lot of good times in Las Vegas, as a kid and as an adult, and now I’m here, watching Miranda Lambert sing “The House That Built Me.” I don’t think I realized before this moment that the song’s about trying to engineer a meaningful experience and not getting it.

In the song Miranda wanders through the house collecting memories, explaining to the current owner what it all means. There’s a tiny bit of defensiveness in it, that she knows what she’s doing is intrusive and weird. The more she explains, the sadder the song gets; she’s spilling her guts to a stranger, who maybe understands or maybe doesn’t. I don’t think the current owner is doing more than humoring her politely, judging by the narrator’s increasingly sad tone. She doesn’t know what she’s doing here, or what she hoped to get out of it. She leaves. Maybe she’s touched by her reminiscences, but at this moment that’s not how it sounds to me. The house maybe used to mean something; it doesn’t anymore. It’s just a building full of someone’s else things. She admits that she thought seeing her childhood would fix “the brokenness in me”; if this house built her it apparently didn’t do a very good job. Maybe I have it wrong, but to me the song is wistful not about memories long past, but about the emptiness of right now. I get this song, and am moved by it, for the first time.

The show ends and Miranda disappears back into the stage. I go out to gamble and enjoy some free drinks and lose as much money as I’m willing to lose. I find the last decent restaurant open and have an extremely late, drunk dinner. I realize I’m not staying longer than tonight. I drive home the next morning. I go back to work.