Lauren Alaina says Miranda Lambert gave her the kind of advice that can linger for years, and it happened in the least glamorous place imaginable: a bathroom at the BMI Awards. Alaina, 31, recently recalled that the first time she met Lambert, the country star pulled her aside and told her, “Don’t you let this town or anybody change who you are. You’re a sweet Southern girl, and you stay that way.”
Alaina said the moment caught her off guard because she had no idea Lambert even knew who she was. “I didn’t even know she knew who I was. It was the sweetest moment ever,” she said on Taste of Country Nights. The encounter mattered because Alaina was still working through the pressures of Nashville after first entering the music industry at 15, when she appeared on American Idol.
That early rise made Alaina one of the show’s most visible country hopefuls in 2011, when she reached the finals and finished second behind Scotty McCreery. By the time she met Lambert, she was already navigating the gap between the person she was and the version of herself the industry can try to shape. Lambert’s advice, framed as a reminder to stay the same, fit neatly into that moment.
The exchange also lands at a time when Lambert has been speaking publicly about life outside music. Last October, she said on The Joe Rogan Experience that she had just started mounted shooting the year before, adding that she was not good at it but loved it. She said her friend Ken Shane, a 10-time world champion in mounted shooting, introduced her to the sport.
Lambert has also said she would be working at an animal rescue shelter if she were not a musician, and that rescue dogs are her second passion. Those comments, along with the bathroom meeting Alaina remembered, paint a picture of an artist who has built a career without losing the habits and interests that came before it. For Alaina, the message was simple and lasting: the advice was not about changing to fit Nashville, but about refusing to.