Margo Price has announced the release of Hard Headed Woman, a hell-bent collection of country music that reconnects with her roots, and further redefines what it means to be a modern outlaw.
Out August 29th on Loma Vista Recordings, the album captures Margo Price at her wisest, funniest, toughest and most vulnerable. It is a promise and a manifesto, a tribute to both a city and genre, a defiant cry for individuality and deep exploration of America, doubling down not only on herself, but what she has always loved: classic songs written from the intellect and the gut, timeless and urgent all at once.
Reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang, recorded in the historic RCA Studio A, and featuring duets with Tyler Childers and Jesse Welles, Hard Headed Woman marks the first album that Price has made in Nashville, a town she has called home for more than 20 years, and vitally helped to transform, creating a lane where independent and insurgent country music can exist and thrive alongside the mainstream. Performed in the same room where late friends like John Prine and Loretta Lynn have all cut records, Hard Headed Woman looks forward and back, as it places her amongst her heroes as part of a new legacy. But this is country music as only Margo Price can make it: free of rules, cherishing tradition, hard-headed with a delicate heart.
Beginning with a proclamation that “I don’t owe you f*cking shit,” as Price paraphrases, Hard Headed Woman is about the unshakable instinct to never waver, especially when our values and our future are on the line. In an era of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is embodied on lead single ‘Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down,’ a song that speaks for the overlooked and underserved, the downtrodden and forgotten. While the track’s titular phrase originates from a call for resistance in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Price was most inspired by the message that Kris Kristofferson whispered to Sinéad O’Connor when she was booed on stage at a Bob Dylan anniversary concert. Co-written with Jeremy Ivey, Kris Kristofferson and Rodney Crowell, one of the early champions who urged Price to create Hard Headed Woman, the single serves as a reminder to always keep fighting for justice and your beliefs. And when the norm is to shut up and sing, and short cuts lie around every corner, Price continues to show how her songwriting can pack the most potent punch of all.
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