NEW YORK (AP) — Dig out your roller skates. Pair them with a cowboy hat. Miranda Lambert has officially entered her disco chapter.
“Crisco,” the country star's 11th studio album, is a collection of boogie-forward tracks, buoyed by sweeping strings and what sounds like a wink from the dance floor. It's out Friday.
“I’ve spent a lot of my career with fiery songs and heartbreak songs and this record just has a lot of joy on it, and I think that’s just where I am right now in life, too,” Miranda says.
The title track is almost a mission statement: “Baby, we’ve been cookin’ with Crisco/Ain’t we mixin’ country and disco/Stir it around, give it a spin/And it’s a rhinestone world we’re livin’ in.”
“I’ve just never explored that before. I really am a Merle Haggard girl, you know what I mean? I just love three chords and the truth,” says Lambert. “I just felt like I, maybe at this point, earned the creative freedom to try something fun and try something different.”
The album release caps a special few months that include getting seven Country Music Association Awards nominations, a disco ball-filled performance at the Academy of Country Music Awards that got attendees up and boogying, and making history as co-writer of the crossover-smash “Choosin’ Texas.”
That tune sung by Ella Langley has gone six times platinum, been crowned Billboard’s official 2026 Song of the Summer and helped her become the only woman to simultaneously hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. It was just named the longest-running No. 1 hit in the U.S.
“We never would have thought just sitting there, on a back porch with a couple of beers and guitars, writing a country song, that it would take over like it has,” Lambert says.
“I’m thrilled that ‘Choosin’ Texas’ is a country song and the world is loving it. Like that makes me happy. I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to country music so that alone is like so much happiness for me.”
Lambert and Langley wrote “Choosin’ Texas” with Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor. It's a song exploring what it feels like when someone is falling out of love with you and Lambert can only guess why America has fallen so in love with it.
“It kind of feels like something fresh, but something you’ve also heard before. When you hear it, you’re like, ‘I kind of want to sing along to this, even though it’s the first time you heard it.’ You know what I mean?”
Lambert co-produced Langley’s album “Dandelion,” the first time she's produced another artist, something she says she enjoyed. Langley returns the favor by being featured on the swaggering opening “Crisco” song “Snakeskin Boots.”
“I think the reason that we are drawn to each other is because I see a lot of my young self in her,” Lambert says of Langley. “She’s definitely a pistol. She’s fiery. She knows exactly what she wants. She’s a true artist and songwriter and she’s an inspiring person to be around.”
Lambert also has good news about another fellow country artist, squashing any lingering beef she had with Kacey Musgraves. The two collaborated on “Horses and Divorces” — “Maybe we’re more alike than we think,” they sing — on Musgraves' new “Middle of Nowhere” album.
Miranda points to the “crazy grind of this business” for prompting ebbs and flows in their relationship and the stress during “early stages of your career, trying to really plant your feet in the ground, plant your stake in the ground, and say, ‘This is my spot.’”
“Sometimes it gets tricky when you're navigating that with other female artists and it was really cool to just come together and talk about it and it's, as we say, whiskey under the bridge now.”
“Crisco” came to life after she and Chris Stapleton wrote and recorded the lovely “A Song To Sing,” their version of “Islands in the Stream,” which earned two Grammy Award nominations.
“We wrote this song a few years ago and it really opened up my mind to exploring different sounds. I think it set us on the path to explore more and got me really curious about parts of country music I hadn’t explored yet, which eventually inspired the entire record,” she says.
The video features Lambert and Stapleton in matching red suits at a roller rink. If you look carefully, you'll see she's wearing a pair of Dolly Parton’s hoop earrings lent out by the late superstar and he's got on a Kenny Rogers necklace.
“I feel like I’ve got to thank her a little bit for this record because that song, that video, that whole day, having a little piece of her around me all day, definitely inspired me for this whole project.”
Grammy Award-winning songwriter Natalie Hemby, who has cut some 40 songs with Lambert over 20 years collaborating, co-wrote and played on five tracks this time, including “Snakeskin Boots.”
“Every record has just been completely different from the next, but I would say this is the most fun era that I’ve had, as far as writing for a project of hers,” says Hemby. “Her star is just shining so bright, as big as Texas, if you will.”
Miranda says country music is in a great spot right now, reminding her of the 1990s when there was something for everyone and a lot of female artists.
“There is finally room for everyone,” she says. “We’re not fighting for like only 30 spots on the chart. And people find music all different kinds of ways now. That has allowed for there to be all kinds of voices out there within our genre.”
This story has been updated to correct that Lambert has earned seven Country Music Association Awards nominations, not six.
Miranda Lambert poses for a portrait in New York on Sept. 10, 2026. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
Miranda Lambert poses for a portrait in New York on Sept. 10, 2026. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP)
The Indian airline captain who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a FlyDubai flight said in a live video call that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save passengers after being stabbed by his co-pilot.
Meanwhile, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who was running in Israel’s upcoming election is withdrawing his candidacy following comments over Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Here is the latest news from the Middle East on Friday. Full coverage is available here.
The FlyDubai captain told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he knew he had to get back on his feet to save everyone on board, after he was stabbed by his co-pilot and the aircraft plunged into a steep descent.
“I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,” Capt. Smit Machchhar said from a hospital in Abu Dhabi. “I was fighting for my life. At one point I realized that if I didn’t get up … then passengers would lose their lives.”
Machchhar was seriously injured in Wednesday’s attack but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter and restrain the attacker as the Boeing 737 descended sharply, witnesses and Israeli authorities said.
The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with 182 people on board, was diverted to Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia for an emergency landing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker, an Omani national, was arrested in Saudi Arabia. His motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
Israel was set to begin repatriation flights to bring back passengers stranded in the United Arab Emirates after commercial travel between the two countries was suspended following the attack.
— More coverage on the attempt to crash the plane is available here.
Sami Abou Shehadeh, the chairman of the left-wing Balad party, said he would withdraw from Israel’s upcoming election after the country’s Supreme Court president said a majority of justices were prepared to uphold his disqualification.
Abou Shehadeh’s candidacy was challenged over an editorial he wrote in the newspaper Al-Araby al-Jadeed the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The article did not condemn Hamas and argued that it was surprising violence hadn’t erupted earlier given conditions in Gaza.
In a subsequent article, Abou Shehadeh, a former member of Israel’s Knesset, called Hamas’ attack both unacceptable and a crime. He said he hadn’t known the scale of the violence when he wrote the first article.
The court weighed whether his remarks violated an Israeli law barring candidates who reject Israel’s existence, incite racism or support armed struggle against Israel. His lawyers said that barring him would reinterpret the law and create a new threshold.
About 20% of Israel's citizens are of Palestinian descent.
Two separate Israeli strikes in Gaza City killed two people and wounded at least another, according to health officials at the Shifa hospital and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
Israel’s military acknowledged carrying out the strikes, saying that it hit militants in the areas, without elaborating. Separately, the military said that it also killed a “Hamas sniper” in an airstrike in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis area, identifying him as Tamer Hamaida. Palestinian health officials said Hamaida was killed in a strike carried out Thursday night.
The Israeli military’s chief Arabic-language spokesperson, Ella Waweya, said this week that the military targeted 70 militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups in the Gaza Strip in September. Palestinians reported a surge in the strikes across the enclave over the past month.
Israeli soldiers have barred Palestinian farmers and activists from harvesting olives in the northern West Bank, according to video footage obtained by The Associated Press.
The footage showed soldiers firing shots in the air and tear gas toward the Palestinian farmers and activists, while settlers were also seen in the area.
Israel's military said troops were deployed following reports of a confrontation, which was dispersed. It added that a security official at the scene fired shots into the air earlier, without elaborating. The military said no one was injured.
The olive harvest season in the West Bank is usually marred by tensions between Palestinian farmers and settlers. Israel has imposed new rules this year, prohibiting Palestinians from harvesting in what’s known as Area C, which is under Israeli security control and encompasses the majority of the territory’s agricultural lands.
Intense fighting engulfed a residential area in Yemen’s Taiz City, as clashes between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces raised concerns over a worsening humanitarian situation.
The World Food Programme warned that renewed fighting in Yemen is worsening an already dire humanitarian situation in a country suffering from severe hunger.
WFP director Matthew Hollingworth said that almost three out of four households are unable to meet their basic food needs.
Shelling by the Houthis on Friday on the residential neighborhood of Wadi al-Qadi in Taiz City injured several people, according to an Associated Press reporter in the city.
Egypt has expelled a diplomat from the Ethiopian Embassy in Cairo in a reciprocal move after Addis Ababa declared an Egyptian diplomat there unwelcome, Egyptian state media reported, marking a further escalation in tensions between the two countries.
Egypt’s al-Qahera News said Egypt declared a counselor at the Ethiopian Embassy persona non grata, giving him 48 hours to leave the country. On Thursday, Ethiopia ordered an Egyptian Embassy staff member to leave the country, according to al-Qahera.
Tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt have recently intensified after Ethiopia accused Egypt of supporting rebel forces in renewed fighting in the Tigray region.
This report will be updated throughout the day as new developments emerge.
This screengrab from Narendra Modi YouTube Channel shows Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking with FlyDubai pilot Capt. Smit Machchhar on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026. (Narendra Modi YouTube Channel via AP )
