According to ABC News, Miranda Lambert has officially entered her disco chapter with "Crisco," her 11th studio album, set for release Friday. The AP's Mark Kennedy describes a collection of boogie-forward tracks buoyed by sweeping strings and "a wink from the dance floor." The title track lays out the mission statement in Lambert's own words: "Baby, we've been cookin' with Crisco / Ain't we mixin' country and disco." Lambert tells the wire service the record "just has a lot of joy on it," adding that where she is in life right now is exactly what shaped the songs.

ABC News reports the album caps an extraordinary run: seven Country Music Association Awards nominations, a disco ball-filled ACM Awards performance that got attendees dancing, and co-writing history with "Choosin' Texas," the Ella Langley smash Lambert wrote with Langley, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor. Per the AP, that song has gone six times platinum, was named Billboard's 2026 Song of the Summer and the longest-running No. 1 hit in the U.S., and made Lambert the only woman to simultaneously top the Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. "We never would have thought... that it would take over like it has," she says.

Per ABC News, "Crisco" carries significant personal firsts and reconciliations. Langley features on the swaggering opener "Snakeskin Boots," and Lambert — who co-produced Langley's "Dandelion," her first time producing another artist — says she sees "a lot of my young self in her." The record also apparently settles scores: Lambert appears on "Horses and Divorces" on Kacey Musgraves' new "Middle of Nowhere" album, which she calls "whiskey under the bridge." Grammy-winning songwriter Natalie Hemby, who co-wrote five tracks, tells the outlet it is "the most fun era" she has had writing for Lambert.

Lambert tells the AP that country music is in a spot she compares to the 1990s: "There is finally room for everyone... We're not fighting for like only 30 spots on the chart." That openness to crossing borders is echoed across the wider roots world — Popzine reports that Sweden's Grammis-nominated band Sunnan is releasing "Spaghetti Soul," a soul, jazz and folk hybrid recorded in Dalarna and on Fårö, touring Europe from February through March. From Nashville disco to Nordic folk-soul, outlets on both sides of the Atlantic describe artists treating genre walls as optional.