Margo Price’s Hard Headed Woman is a defiant country record built on truth, grit, and tradition, delivered with the fire of an artist who never backs down. Guests include Rodney Crowell and Tyler Childers.
Nearly ten years after her breakthrough debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, shook Nashville, Margo Price returns with Hard Headed Woman, an album that reclaims country songwriting at its purest and most fearless. Where others have bent to trends, Price has doubled down on truth and craft, proving once again why she is one of the genre’s most vital voices.
The new album is steeped in tradition while unapologetically her own. Collaborations with Tyler Childers and Rodney Crowell, a Waylon Jennings cut passed on by Jessi Colter, and a set of songs written with her husband Jeremy Ivey anchor the album in heritage and intimacy. Recorded at the legendary RCA Studio A with Matt Ross-Spang, Hard Headed Woman embraces a raw, roots-driven sound that reconnects Price with the spirit of her earliest days playing Nashville dive bars.
Price has spent the years since her debut in relentless motion. She’s made four albums, written a memoir, produced for others, served as the first female board member of Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid, and stretched into psychedelic rock on her last record, Strays. Yet she felt the pull back to her foundation: storytelling songs sung with grit and heart. “I always knew I would come back to this more rooted sound,” she explains.
The songs are both political and personal, sometimes in the same breath. Lead single “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down” was inspired by Kris Kristofferson’s support of Sinéad O’Connor when she was booed on stage at a Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary show while echoing the resistance of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. “Close to You” blends flamenco flourishes with desert air, while “Don’t Wake Me Up” channels Dylan’s freewheeling bite. Elsewhere, “Nowhere is Where” and “Losing Streak” meditate on survival and endurance, and “Wild At Heart” reflects on Nashville’s changes through Price’s eyes.
Price’s refusal to compromise is at the heart of this album. She has rejected the lure of writing for pop stars or chasing easy commercial wins. Instead, she offers a collection that speaks for the working class and the overlooked, crafted with the honesty and defiance that first set her apart. Hard Headed Woman is a love letter to country music, a call to individuality, and a reminder that Price remains as uncompromising as ever.