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MIRANDA LAMBERT
THE HOUSES THAT BUILT ME

Guitar 1: Acoustic Fingerpicking
Guitar 2: Electric Lead
Format
 

SV-TABS

Intensity
  

INTERMEDIATE

About the Track

This killer tune was released as the third single from Lambert’s album Revolution on March 8, 2010. 
Written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin, the song explores the emotional journey of returning to one’s childhood home to reconnect with identity—with lyrics like “I thought that maybe I could find myself…”

Chart Performance

Chart-Topping: The song became Lambert’s first No. 1 on Billboard Hot Country Songs, staying there for four weeks 

Sales: Surpassed 2 million in US sales by April 2014, and nearly 2.27 million by 2016 

Accolades:

Won Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance (2011) 

Earned CMA awards for Single of the Year and Music Video of the Year in 2010 

Captured ACM awards for Single and Video of the Year in 2011 .

The Song

The idea came from Allen Shamblin. He was inspired by his own childhood memories and a longing to revisit the house where he grew up in Huffman, Texas.

Shamblin and Douglas met up in Douglas’s writing room, where Shamblin told him: “I’ve been thinking about going back to the house that built me.”

Douglas immediately recognized it as a powerful hook — the twist is that it’s not just a house; it built the person you became.

Songwriting Notes

The song’s power is in its simplicity. Douglas has said they kept stripping away lines to keep it direct and relatable.
It’s written in first-person, as if the singer is literally knocking on the door of their childhood home. This creates a vivid scene, but leaves enough open space for listeners to project their own story onto it.

The lyrics have specific, sensory details (the handprints on the front steps, the dog buried in the yard) that ground the emotion in something real.


Patrick Jones - Course author
MEET THE INSTRUCTOR

STAYCE ROBERTS

Electric, Acoustic and 12-String Guitars
With over 40 years of dedication to the instrument, Stayce has taken his love of songwriting, guitar playing and producing that allows him to bring a fresh, professional style to his Online Instructional Videos, making him a top tier instructor in song and lesson tutorials.