I said everybody…

[Video][Website]
[7.50]

Patrick St. Michel: A break-up song that brings out some mother issues that also acts as a snapshot of an emotional breakthrough, complete with some great lines sprinkled about (“sometimes revenge is a choice you gotta make”). What makes it even better is how much fun Lambert makes this, especially when she amps up the intensity near the end.
[7]

Crystal Leww: This isn’t really a song about heartbreak; it’s a song about the way that women relate to their mothers and each other through private and public appearances. Despite her mother’s seemingly level-headed advice, Lambert explodes in the chorus, characterizing her mother as privately dramatic. Something becomes very apparent: the demure aspect of femininity is put on for everyone else to see just like all the makeup. I like her rejection of the bottling up of feelings (“Sometimes revenge is a choice you gotta make”). Lambert wants ladies to stop being so scared of what’s others think. Ladies, you deserve to do you, and he doesn’t deserve anything better.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I think I have heard this before, and the bombast may be her only signal, but she’s not polite, and she’s actively refusing demure Southern womanhood. For all the boys who talk about the rougher South, it’s refreshing to get a woman attacking something with no small amount of fierceness.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: Lambert enjoys accentuating the dramatic in rural life — the arson in this song is, for once, metaphorical — but “Mama’s Broken Heart” doubles down on the caricatures of “Only Prettier” to create what is practically a small town burlesque, from its gossiping “barflies and Baptists” to its evocations of Jackie Kennedy “when Camelot went down in flames.” This is a performer who has always understood the importance of appearances far more often than she has evinced an interest in maintaining them, and her relationship advice in this chorus is draconian: “Go and fix your make-up, girl, it’s just a break-up.” The punkish rockabilly arrangement makes the gothic touches more delicious.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: “Mama’s Broken Heart” is such a well-written song that it makes the drama-magnet who can’t get over it seem if not sympathetic then at least entertaining. Co-writer Kasey Musgraves sings it well, but she doesn’t have Lambert’s ability to do unhinged and to savour the ends of the best lines. An almost punkish power-pop direction would suit Lambert down to the ground if she kept on doing stuff like this; why does she always wait ’til the tail end of an album campaign to unleash the big guns?
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: The most vivid and necessary voice in modern country speaks again. Her sarcasm about the hypocrisy demanded by restrictive social contracts is broad, but there’s a snarl in the guitars that makes me think of Joe Ely by way of Joan Jett, and Lambert’s performance — especially if you take in the video — is as punk rock as it is vaudevillian.
[7]

Alfred Soto: On its release sixteen months ago, Four The Record competed with Pistol Annies; now it’s got Ashley Monroe, Kacey Musgraves, and another Pistol Annies record in its sights. But Lambert’s list of how suburbanites run with the dogs tonight works much better freed from its host album, where it sounded rote.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Ace writing from Brandy Clark and the Musgraves/McAnally tandem. The chorus is more fun to hear than sing with, but as a dark-red rocker it’s so well-detailed that I don’t mind the revisionism. And Lambert delivers the refrain’s chiding with such bite you know history’s doomed to repeat.
[7]