Album Review – Margo Price’s “Hard Headed Woman”

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photo: Yana Yatsuk

Oh, Miss Margo Price: the jilted high school cheerleader captain of country music. She had us all singing her praises when she released her debut album Midwest Farmer’s Daughter in 2016. But after some serious overhyping, and her propensity to tell people to shove it on Twitter under the veil of “activism,” she became a super polarizing character, eventually fluttering away from country music to some version of pop in the vein of Kacey, Maren, Taylor, and so many other country women.

But now Margo’s back, reunited with original producer Matt Ross-Spang, and just released perhaps the best album since her debut, maybe the best album of her entire career, and maybe one of the best country albums so far this year—and in a year of kick ass country albums from kick ass country women. If a guy that Margo once said was an “uneducated, misogynistic, racist, homophobic bully” can give this thing an honest listen and come to this conclusion (don’t worry, she got ratio’d by her own fans), so can you. This really is a killer record.

It’s been said before, but making great country music really isn’t that complicated ladies and gentlemen. Pick up a pen and paper and spill your guts, get some hot shit pickers in the studio, find some good variety in mood and tempo, and don’t try to be too cute about it. Along with some quality songs, Hard Headed Woman is just a great listening record, fun and infectious at times, deeply sentimental in others, and strongly country to go along with ample variety to keep the listening experience interesting.

Margo Price says what inspired her to get back to her country roots was shaking up her touring band. Sturgill Simpson might be partly to blame for that after he stole bass player Kevin Black back. Ironically, Simpson did his own stint in the Price Tags before his career exploded. But really the story of Hard Headed Woman feels like Margo going back in time to before her two kids with fellow performer Jeremy Ivey, and singing songs about when she was young, heartbroken, and hungry.


Tough times are where the best country songs come from. Margo Price sings about a lot of tough times on this record. “Close To You” and “Keep a Picture” capture the authentic emotions of a pining heart, and are graced by strong storytelling. “Nowhere is Where” is a sad exploration of Midwest despondency that Price can sing about with authority. These songs are also complimented by interesting textures, however understated, like the fiddle in “Nowhere.” Price has always struggled to capture the best of herself in studio. Hard Headed Woman breaks that streak.

Price does reprise her tradition of having duet partners sing in uncomfortable keys when Tyler Childers joins her on “Love Me Like You Used To Do.” But man is the song a country heartbreaker that ultimately sets right in your ears. And even though there’s a lot of sad songs here, the album doesn’t listen through like a downer overall. “Losing Streak” is about living out of your car and in the same clothes for a couple of weeks, but Price makes this upbeat country rock anthem feel downright inspirational by the end, constituting one of the record’s best tracks.

And if you want hot shit country songs, you got them with “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down” co-written with Kris Kristofferson and Rodney Crowell, the super fun “Red Eye Flight,” and the perfect album ender in “Kissing You Goodbye.” There are a lot of influences evidenced on Hard Headed Woman, but the prevailing one is country with an Outlaw kick.

The title of this album can be employed both as a euphemism and as a term of endearment. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being principled or even political if a performer feels it’s necessary. But there is a point when an artist’s prickly nature fails to serve their own interests, or even fails to serve the political causes they support. At times in her career, Margo Price has found that breaking point, while also losing sight of what makes her special as a musician and artist. By recognizing her own hard-headedness, she can utilize it as a strength, but not allow it to be a burden or a weakness.

What’s great about a great album is that it solves a lot of problems, puts things into perspective, papers over petty grievances, and puts the emphasis where it should be first and foremost: the music. That’s the kind of retrenching, revitalizing, entertaining, and important album Margo Price has released with Hard Headed Woman, at least in the estimate of this “uneducated, misogynistic, racist, homophobic bully.”

8.3/10

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