Margo Price
Hard Headed Woman
LOMA VISTA
Although everything about Hard Headed Woman signals an arrival at things rightly historic—an earned outlaw vibe, recording sessions in Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A, a co-write with mentor Rodney Crowell—Margo Price couldn’t sound more rooted in 2025. Perhaps it’s the in-your-face frankness that goes ever so naturally with her high, wearied voice that invokes Dolly Parton with six shots of Dewars, the dog-eared tone of which gives Price true gritty gravitas on the uptempo “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” (she credits the late Kris Kristofferson who said those very words to Sinéad O’Connor following the singer’s 1992 live appearance at Madison Square Garden where she was booed off the stage).
On “Losing Streak,” Price might sound as if she’s joking, but there’s a multi-layered, lived-in sadness behind her teasing and tempting fate—the sound of hard luck and loss that comes with the death of a child, surviving alcoholism, and the rough road of paying very real dues that the singer once wrote about in earnest on her 2023 album Strays, as well as in her 2022 memoir Maybe We’ll Make It. “Love Me Like You Used to Do” has the emotional heft of lifting one’s head from the tears in their beer, a worrisome moment where a relationship goes from freshly frisky to over and done.
For every tender moment of Hard Headed Woman, such as “Close to You,” there’s a song of hair-down, wind-blow abandon (“Wild at Heart”). For every irked and ire-filled fuck off, such as Waylon Jennings’ “I Just Don’t Give a Damn,” there’s something pure and soulful and yearning such as “Keep a Picture” and “Kissing You Goodbye,” penned by Price alongside her husband and musical partner Jeremy Ivey. Enjoy the ride that Margo Price has planned here: For every bitter “yin” on Hard Headed Woman, there’s its equal, active, electric correlation in a sweeter “yang.”
