MUSIC
Back in Time, Keeping It Personal
Grammy-nominated Margo Price invokes her life struggles
BY STEVE ERICKSON
A sharp collection of autobiographical
and political
songs with a traditionalist
country sound, Margo
Price’s 2017 “All-American Made”
appealed to fans outside the genre
and helped lead to a Grammy
nomination. She plays well to rock
fans: her fi rst two albums were released
by Jack White’s Third Man
Records label, and she’s the only
country artist on her new label, the
Universal Music Group-distributed
Loma Vista. In fact, she speaks to
people alienated by mainstream
country music, which isn’t a welcoming
place even for the most
conservative women, much less
singers with explicitly leftist lyrics.
“All-American Made” had a fairly
spare sound, with acoustic guitar,
pedal steel and honky-tonk piano.
Her latest album, “That’s How
Rumors Get Started,” which is
released July 10, goes in a more
genre-agnostic direction.
As rock music’s commercial
niche has cratered, some extremely
popular country singers, like
Chris Stapleton and Eric Church,
would have been fi led next to Bob
Seger, John Mellencamp, and
Bruce Springsteen as “roots rock”
in the ‘80s. Produced by Sturgill
Simpson, whose last album mixed
Southern rock and New Wave,
“That’s How Rumors Get Started”
trades in the pedal steel for thick,
fuzzed-out electric guitars and
pianos carrying the melody. While
“That’s How Rumors Get Started”
does look back to the ‘70s — the
gospel-infl uenced “Hey Child” suggests
Loretta Lynn fronting the
Rolling Stones — Price’s vocals
and lyrics keep it urgent and personal.
“Heartless Mind” ventures
furthest from country music, with
synthesizers and a drum sound off
a Cars album.
The lyrics on “That’s How Rumors
Get Started” refl ect the
pressure of having to make a living
spending half the year on the
road. “Prisoner of the Highway”
takes tropes from rock and country
lyrics by men — or elsewhere,
Margo Price’s latest album, “That’s How Rumors Get Started,” goes in a more genre-agnostic direction.
Margo Price’smusic speaks to those who have felt detached from country music and its conservative
ties.
like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”
— about a life of travel. But where
men have celebrated that existence,
Price points out the fi ne line
between liberation and loneliness,
singing, “I sacrifi ced my family”
over a swooning Hammond organ.
“Twinkle Twinkle” looks back at
her past, when she was a young
girl passively consuming Hollywood
movies, but instead of simply
celebrating her success in the
music industry, she emphasizes
the stress of getting and staying
there. She went through a period
of homelessness and relying on
petty theft to feed herself. “But
then I won the lottery/ I stuck gold
BOBBI RICH
BOBBI RICH
and they picked me,” she recalls,
but looking at her rise, she sings,
“If it don’t break you/ It might
just make you rich/ You might
not get there.” Rather than fl exing
about her popularity, the song
ends abruptly on the phrase “it’s a
bitch.” Price avoids mythologizing
herself on these songs. Instead,
they’re so full of anxiety that her
ability to make a living from music
could vanish at any time.
Price cited Petty in “All-American
Made” and has mentioned taking
inspiration from his lyrics about
girls in Middle America. This album
is less pop-oriented than his
sound, but “Stone Me” is her equivalent
of “I Won’t Back Down.” It alludes
to her problems with alcohol:
“sobriety is a hell of a drug.” (She
already wrote about her drunk
driving accident and subsequent
brief stay in jail on “Weekender.”)
The defi ant singer addresses a
man who tries to drag her down,
using Christian imagery. As a response
to fans screaming “Judas!”
when he plugged in an electric guitar
and switched from folk music
to rock music, Bob Dylan sang “everybody
must get stoned” in 1966,
but it played as a giggly double entendre
about weed. Price is at her
most serious and passionate using
the same metaphor.
“All-American Made” is one of
the best protest songs of the Trump
era, although Price began writing
it while Obama was president.
Threading her vocals through samples
of presidential speeches, she
sang about Iran-Contra, and wondered
“if the president gets much
sleep at night/ And if the folks on
welfare are making it alright.” The
subtler “Loner” took aim at American
alienation and conformism,
while “Pay Gap” offered a working
class feminist perspective. No
doubt fearing pigeonholing, Price
avoids overtly political lyrics on
“That’s How Rumors Get Started.”
We live in a period where genre
divisions increasingly seem like
marketing niches. The Rolling
Stones had a freedom to play with
blues, country, gospel, disco, funk
and any other style they wanted
to while still benefi ting from being
considered a rock band. This
generally hasn’t been extended to
women and/ or African-Americans.
But if the sound of “All-American
Made” looked back at ’70s outlaw
country (complete with a Willie
Nelson duet), “That’s How Rumors
Get Started” has more in common
with the music played on rock stations
at that time. Price turns to
the ‘70s to fi nd inspiration to express
the diffi culties of her own life
right now.
MARGO PRICE | “That’s How Rumors
Get Started” | Loma Vista |
lomavistarecordings.com
July 16 - July 29, 2 32 020 | GayCityNews.com
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