During a panel at the 2020 Country Radio Seminar, outspoken country star Miranda Lambert shared quite a bit about her early days on the scene, including her experience appearing on Season 1 of Nashville Star. Lambert and her mother drove around Texas, "Loretta Lynn-style," to play for radio stations before the future superstar auditioned for the TV singing competition in 2003.

"I was so scared of the [Dallas-Fort Worth airport]. How am I going to navigate this? I have to land in Nashville and live in a house with 10 strangers," Lambert recalls. "I basically treated it like moving into a dorm, I guess. That's what it was. I just thought, 'I have to give it my all. I'm here, I've made it, I'm going to try.'"

And try she did. Lambert was 19, a decade younger the other contestants, and she had to prove herself quickly. "When the show started, the first episode, I was the first contestant to do the first song, on the first episode," she recalls. "I did a Hank Williams song called "Settin' the Woods on Fire.""

Lambert landed in third place after nine weeks on the show, behind John Arthur Martinez and Buddy Jewell. While she didn't come home with a win, her finishing spot worked out better in the long run, as she caught the attention of Sony executives, who later signed her.

"All my grit from the bars, all the moments where nobody was listening, people were clanking balls, people on the stage, and booing you, requesting waltzes 24/7 -- it was like everything that had culminated came to that moment," Lambert recounts. "That was what set me on this journey."

Lambert is currently out on the road for her 2020 Wildcard Tour. She released her newest album, also named Wildcard, in late 2019.

WATCH: More About Miranda Lambert's Time on Nashville Star

LOOK: Miranda Lambert Through the Years

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