Margo Price : Hard Headed Woman
Margo Price doesn’t mince words. When she sings, “Dudes lookin down their noses, thinkin’ bullshit smells like roses/All the cocaine in existence couldn’t keep your nose out of my business” on the Hard Headed Woman opening track “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” she’s being unrepentantly herself as always. It sets the tone for a powerful country album that, if not as eclectic as 2023’s Strays, is no less bold.
Fans of quality country, pull-no-punches songwriting, and often guitar-forward tunes that just fucking rip should all be glad for Hard Headed Woman. It’s Price’s best record since her 2017 sophomore/breakout record All American Made and may well be her best to date.
One can, unfortunately, imagine a universe in which it didn’t come out. Where simmering backlash against her 2021 lambasting of radio-Nashville heavyweights Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen—for mid-2010s use of Confeferate imagery and then-current use of the n-word, respectively—led to her marginalization. It’s impossible to know if Price’s outspokenness specifically kept her from country airplay. But the wealth of data on how country radio minimizes women artists can’t be denied. It’s hard not to wonder if her stance gave country radio programmers added motivation to shut her out.
Fortunately, Margo Price didn’t use radio to build and keep her audience—regular touring, word of mouth, and sheer quality are responsible for that. (Besides, a glance at Billboard’s latest country charts reveals a desolate landscape indeed, where Wallen, Combs, and equally groan-inducing figures like Jelly Roll hold court. At least Shaboozey’s ahead of most of them on the airplay chart.)
Price isn’t immune to the pressure placed on her to conform, whether as a woman artist in a male-saturated genre or simply as someone trying to survive under a hyper-patriarchal capitalist society. “Close to You” could play as autobiography or character sketch, depending on how you want to read it, but indisputably depicts the aching need to be near a lover in the midst of chaos: “We played the jukebox while democracy fell.” Elsewhere, she drills into a temptation to ignore the state of things (“Don’t Wake Me Up,” whose video nods charmingly to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”). And the Tyler Childers collaboration “Love Me Like You Used To” tackles the oft-beaten horse of keeping romance alive deep in a long partnership and makes it fresh with wryly observed moments—copying lines from rom-coms, double entendres about tissue boxes, admitting “I believe in us … most of the time.” (Childers’ match for Price’s vocal prowess—no easy feat—and the impeccable pedal-steel-heavy shuffle arrangement help immeasurably to sell the thing.)
Hard Headed Woman also comes with an interesting mid-album diptych (“Nowhere is Where” and “Losing Streak”) where she shows us how rocky the road to Nashville gets. Some Music City songwriters, and journalists like Paul Hemphill or Alannah Nash, were once as blunt about this subject as Price gets on “Streak” (“On the brink of a mental breakdown/I spent two weeks in the same clothes”), but now it’s a rare bird indeed.
I’ve gone too long without talking about how musically propulsive and captivating this album is, so let me rectify that. It’s unclear whether the new touring band touted in the press materials backs Price here as well, but whoever they are, they’re never less than in the pocket. They switch effortlessly between country shuffles and ballads (“Nowhere;” “Love Me Like…”), austere folk (“Keep a Picture”), and electrified-to-11 barnburners (“Bastards,” “Red Eye,” “Losing Streak,” the mariachi-tinged “Wild at Heart”).
At times, like on “Don’t Wake Me Up” and her version of George Jones’ immortal “I Just Don’t Give a Damn,” she picks a vaguely soul-accented sound like what Drive-By Truckers did for Go-Go Boots, and her band doesn’t blink. The way the horns on her Jones cover gradually emerge as the song heads toward its furious, devastating climax recalls dynamic trickery Billy Sherrill might’ve employed, though he wouldn’t have used horns that funky.
As noted earlier, this isn’t as genre-stretching as Strays, but it’s more cohesive and distilled. (The blistering electric lead guitar, whether it’s Price or her husband Jeremy Ivey, contributes further to the momentum.) Hard Headed Woman is Price using all her tools at the highest level, and whatever streaks she lost to get here, she’s sure as hell on a winning heater now.
Label: Loma Vista
Year: 2025
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Margo Price : Hard Headed Woman
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