Margo Price Announces Hard Headed Woman, Hear: “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down”

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Margo Price has announced her fifth studio album, Hard Headed Woman. The news comes after two years spent touring and promoting Strays, her brilliant 2023 record that featured the likes of Lucius, the Heartbreakers’ Mike Campbell, and Sharon Van Etten. It was such a potent era of creativity for her that she put out a second album of material called Strays II late that year. “At its core, the theme of Strays is freedom—be it control over our bodies or exploring the ecstasy of orgasms or letting go of the disruptive forces of drinking,” I wrote in our Cover Story feature on Price. “In a broad sense, it’s about learning to live with no longer wanting—or hoping—to change our pasts. That’s a very country-inspired and bold type of reckoning to project across an album that is very much not hinged to that particular turn of phrase. But, then again, the work of Margo Price can never be boiled down to just one thing.”

Margo Price is now returning to her roots in outlaw country, the style that defined her terrific 2016 debut Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Inspired by Kris Kristofferson, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Rodney Crowell, Hard Headed Woman will arrive August 29 via Loma Vista Recordings and feature Tyler Childers and Jesse Welles. The announcement comes with lead single “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” an anthem for “the overlooked and underserved.” “I always hope to do like Johnny Cash did, which is speak up for the common man and woman,” she said in a press release. “But there have been so many threats and anger and vitriol over the years, when I am only coming from a place of love. So I made the decision to rebuild everything from the ground up. I hope this album inspires people to be fearless and take chances and just be unabashedly themselves, in a culture that tries as hard as it can to beat us into all being the same.”

Watch the music video for “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” and check out the Hard Headed Woman artwork and tracklist below.