Hard Headed Woman (Loma Vista, 2025)

Is Margo Price hard headed? Well, that's one way to describe someone who never compromises on her principles or her musical vision. Maybe "outlaw" is a nicer, not to mention more accurate, term, though, since Margo may be single-handedly keeping the original spirit of outlaw country music alive. Her sixth album is chock full of the attitude, humor and hard-won wisdom that she is famous – and sometimes controversial – for.

Her commitment to the outlaw movement roots is very much in evidence here. She chose to record this record at RCA studio A, where Waylon Jennings recorded the seminal outlaw album "Honky Tonk Heroes." That's not the only way in which it feels like the old guard are passing the mantle on to her. Jessi Colter, Waylon's widow, encouraged her to do Ol' Waylon's "Kissin' You Goodbye," and she does it faithfully, even leaving in the Spoonerised "I woke up this morning and couldn't find my shiv a git" lyric, although elsewhere on the album Price uses the unexpergated expletive in question twice. She also pays homage to another OG outlaw by reworking Kris Kristofferson's anti-war "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down" into a credo for anyone who, like Price, is determined to maintain integrity in a business that can rob you of it before you know what's happening. ("Those tone deaf sons a bitches / They don't know your rags to riches.") On a more personal level, "Losing Streak" evokes her own early struggles as an unknown musician.

But she's no throwback. As grounded in and respectful of what has gone before, it's the future of the subgenre she's most concerned about. She teams up with Tyler Childers, another musician who doesn't always play by the rules, on "Love Me Like You Used To Do" an old fashioned sounding song about fairly new ways to spice up a long-term relationship. The Dylanesque "Don't Wake Me Up" with Jesse Wells is not just a fun word torrent, but a subtle commentary on one way to cope with all the bad news these days. And "Red Eye Flight" is a goodbye letter to "you ole burned out, long haired, lyin', drinkin' love of my life." Her lyrics aren't flashy and don't draw attention to themselves but she can quietly devastate you with a line like "We talked about heaven, and we talked about hell / We played the jukebox while democracy fell" (from the romantic-almost-to-the-point-of-obession "Close to You").

(Speaking of throwbacks, this album is available on 8-track tape, so if you've got one of those Edsels of musical technology gathering dust in your attic you'll finally have something new to play on it – or more likely feed to it as these clunkers were notorious for eating tapes.)

With a hard headed, not to mention, multi-talented woman like Margo Price holding the reins, the future of outlaw music is in good hands.