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The Sounding Board

The Margo Price is right on Hard Headed Woman

by Ben Hohenstatt on September 2, 2025

A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.

Hard Headed Woman

Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. I’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.

Margo Price’s long losing streak seems to be growing smaller in the rearview mirror all the time.

The Jobian decade and change that passed while Price was trying to break through included devastating personal loss, self-destructive behavior, time in a jail cell, and rejection after rejection. It remains a foundational element of Price’s songwriting perspective, but at this point, the twangy singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist who once dubbed herself the “World’s Greatest Loser,” has been stringing together wins for a while.

Back in 2016, the hard-living, touched-by-tragedy, small town-fleeing Price released her solo debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, a bravely autobiographic old-school country album, on Third Man Records.1 It was an overnight success more than 10 hardscrabble years in the making. The solo debut earned Price deserved praise, put her on national TV and some long-coveted stages and placed her in the company of her heroes. Price is now on album No. 5 or 6, depending on how one classifies her expanded rerelease from 2023. It’s a body of work that compares favorably to the discographies of Price’s like-minded contemporaries — Sturgill Simpson, Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton — and can go blow for blow with the Outlaw legends and genre titans Price clearly loves.2 Her newest album, Hard Headed Woman, which boasts a souped-up version of the sound that put Price on the map in the first place, isn’t Price’s absolute best, but it can still be counted as the latest link in that chain of creative triumphs.3

Hard Headed Woman is an album defined in large part by righteous fury that would make Wanda Jackson proud, but it also sounds like a riotous victory lap. It’s a broadside against the dweebs, stuffed shirts and soul-draining chaos that put a cap on the potential suggested by awesome scenes and impressive eclecticism that are on display daily in the U.S. It is also a celebration of self and a joyous exhibition of songwriting prowess with a commitment to the sounds of classic country music. That last characteristic means the album gets a little sweaty, but more often than not the music is good enough that even the most lactose-averse will be able to gladly stomach its cheese.

“Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” which shares its title with a Kris Kristofferson song, and the advice Kristofferson gave Sinéad O’Connor in 1992 after the latter was booed vociferously at a Bob Dylan tribute, is a great distillation of Hard Headed Woman‘s impulses.4 “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” is Hard Headed Woman‘s lead single, the first proper song on the album, and a phrase already adorning merch, so it seems like Price and the people at Loma Vista Recordings suspected the song had a good thing going. They were right.

While its title positions “Bastards” in the lineage of Outlaw Country, its music sounds descended from the ’70s output of Glen Campbell.5 “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” delivers its title phrase with sing-song buoyancy, and that energy is matched by bright, free-wheeling music. It’s a busy, bouncy, impossibly clean arrangement featuring acoustic guitar, electric guitar, fiddle, pedal steel, electric bass, and several background singers. Matt Ross-Spang, the former Sun Records wunderkind who produced Price’s first two albums, is back for Hard Headed Woman. His work is impressive throughout, but he really dialed up some rhinestone gleam for “Bastards.” Price’s lyrics have enough of a mean streak to provide an acerbic counterbalance. As a touring artist, Price has been all over the country, and at every stop (“From Aberdeen to Austin/ Saint Augustine to Boston“), she’s found people just as put out, put upon and pissed off about the money-hoarding powers that be who insist on meddling in people’s lives. (All the cocaine in existence/ Couldn’t keep your nose out of my business). In Price’s case, it seems like the bastards are mealy-mouthed music executives who curdle the reality of making a living off of music (When a dream becomes a nightmare/ You wake up bound for nowhere/ Too bored to pay attention/ Too far and few to mention/ Dudes lookin’ down their noses/ Thinkin’ bullshit smells like roses).” But the description is broad enough that it can apply to any of the omnipresent cretins who will co-opt the things that make life special once prohibition fails (They wanna wear your rhinestones/ Man, they ain’t got the backbone/ Them tone-deaf sons of bitches/ They don’t know you’re rags to riches.”) It makes Price’s call for resistance and persistence as cathartic as it is simple.

Several songs on Hard Headed Woman work in a similar barnstorming, throwback milieu. “Red Eye Flight,” which immediately follows “Bastards” on the album, is the most successful, although the barroom waltz of “Wild at Heart” and preposterously brassy “I Just Don’t Give A Damn” come close. “Red Eye Flight” is a classic getaway song about making a pre-dawn exit from a doomed relationship. It has a real sense of momentum and a nice dollop of playfulness that make it a blast to listen to. There’s a moment when Price asks, “Can’t you hear those semis roar,” and the guitar mimics the sound of a passing tractor-trailer. She lets out a yelp of genuine excitement just before a guitar solo kicks in. They’re small moments, but they’re incredibly fun.

While rockabilly sensibilities mostly carry the day, there are, of course, some slow songs, too. “Nowhere is Where” paints a bleak picture of a rural America where “nothing grows, but the debt you owe, and the dry rivers run,” but adds a silver lining in the form of escape with a kindred spirit. “Love Me Like You Used To Do,” a Steven Knudson cover that enlists the talents of Tyler Childers, is a pleasant two-hander ballad. Unfortunately, it shares an album with “Close To You,” a romantic, swooning Price original that captures the internal ache of someone in long-distance love perfectly. It’s a simple, smoldering song that puts the rest of the world on hold to satisfy a marrow-deep need for connection. “Close To You” is filled with specific observations, singing along to Lucinda Williams while driving, a tipsy night spent dancing in a pub while “democracy fell,” a wet leather jacket, the texture of calloused hands, but it broadcasts its raw-nerved emotion so clearly that it becomes universal. It’s a lovely, stripped-down respite on an otherwise busy and bustling album.

“Losing Streak” splits the difference between the album’s two modes. Its verses, which describe Price’s pre-Midwest Farmer’s Daughter life, are delivered clearly and slowly, allowing harrowing detail to seep in. Its world is a liminal space between benders. Price is living in a car too old to be reliable but too new to be coveted for its vintage. She doesn’t have connections, she has burn outs who she drinks with. Smoking a broken cigarette counts as a significant comfort. It’s a grim scene, but Price sets it with flourish and pushes the song toward its chorus, which she delivers in a full-throated roar, “All the loose change in my pockets and the patches on my jeans/ Can’t buy away the blues that this world’s afforded me/ But I’d sell my soul to write a song to save me from this trip I’m on/ ‘Cause peace of mind is hard to find when you’re on a losin’ streak.” The song’s story ends before Price finds acclaim, success and something like salvation through her music. But, the lively, extended jam that brings “Losing Streak” to a close suggests that Price is having an easier time finding peace of mind these days.

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  1. This Vice profile does a great job detailing the myriad challenges and setbacks Price worked through. ↩︎
  2. Price’s discography is riddled with allusions to and appearances by country and Americana greats. Hard Headed Woman is no exception. ↩︎
  3. Strays is a staggering double album of spaced-out Americana that lands closer to Laurel Canyon rock than to anything coming out of Nashville. Price’s best country album, for me, is the tuneful and adroit All American Made. Price seems to hate hyphenating her work. ↩︎
  4. If you’re reading Media Magpies, you almost certainly know why O’Connor was booed, but if you’ve found your way to this pop culture-obsessed corner of the web for the first time, here it is: On Oct. 3, 1992, O’Connor ripped a photo of Pope John Paul II after saying “fight the real enemy.” The action, done in protest of the culture of abuse long present in the Catholic Church, was not understood and was poorly received at the time. Critics thought that the often-strident O’Connor had gone a little too far with the stunt. In hindsight, the Catholic Church may have went a little too far. ↩︎
  5. I think Campbell should have faced criminal charges for what he did to Allen Toussaint’s absolutely perfect song, but it’s excellent stylistic shorthand. ↩︎

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