Mary Lambert, an adult alternative performer whose confessional songwriting and live performances make space for open displays of feeling—tears included—first reached the upper tier of the Billboard 200 through her contribution to the hit single “Same Love” by the hip-hop duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, taken from their 2012 album The Heist. She quickly followed that exposure with the poetry collection 500 Tips for Fat Girls in 2013 and the Top 30-charting debut album Heart on My Sleeve in 2014. Five years later came Grief Creature, an intensely private 2019 release she described as “a breakup album to shame.”
Raised in Seattle, Lambert completed a Bachelor of Music degree in composition at the Cornish College of the Arts. Although she had already written a symphony performed by the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, she turned instead toward pop music and spoken word. Recognition for the latter arrived in 2011 when she won that year’s Seattle Poetry Slam.
Her music career began in 2012 with the EP Letters Don't Talk, an early recording that aligned her with influences including Tori Amos, Imogen Heap, Feist, and Sarah McLachlan. Drawn to her candid style, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis asked her to appear on their gay-marriage anthem “Same Love,” a track from the multi-platinum album The Heist. The single appeared in 2012, after which Lambert toured with the pair through 2013. Also in 2013 she published 500 Tips for Fat Girls and released her second EP, Welcome to the Age of My Body. Two Grammy nominations further elevated her profile; at the January 2014 ceremony she performed alongside Macklemore & Lewis and Madonna while Queen Latifah presided over the vows for 33 couples. Later that year Capitol issued Heart on My Sleeve, which reached number 29 on the Billboard 200. Two stand-alone singles followed in 2016, then the Bold EP arrived in 2017.
Developed across five years and numerous versions, her second studio album, Grief Creature, was issued by Tender Heart Records in 2019, one year after the related poetry volume Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across. Lambert wrote, produced, and arranged nearly every element of the seventeen-track set, which examined depression, anxiety, and the aftermath of sexual assault and discrimination. Guest vocalists included Macklemore, Julien Baker, and Hollis.
