The journey for Margo Price to the release of her highly anticipated third album, That’s How Rumors Get Started, was fraught with obstacles. She recorded the album in the middle of her pregnancy with daughter Ramona. Her East Nashville home barely escaped the deadly tornadoes although she and her husband, singer-songwriter Jeremy Ivey, had many friends who were affected. The two has just left an East Nashville bar when the tornado literally hit where they were seated twenty-thirty minutes earlier. Further, they don’t know whether Ivey ever contracted Covid-19, but he was deeply ill for a month. Put all those factors together with the loss of John Prine, the onset of the virus and shut down mode, and it makes for an especially weird ramp-up to an album release, delayed at first, but now here.
The album was produced by Price’s friend Sturgill Simpson and co-produced by Price and David Ferguson. The ten originals were recorded as basic tracks at East/West in L.A. during the week Price received her Best New Artist Grammy nomination. The band comprises a high profile group including guitarist Matt Sweeny (Adele, Iggy Pop), bassist Pino Palladino (D’Angelo, John Mayer), drummer James Gadson (Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye), and Benmont Tench (Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers). Background vocals were added by Simpson on “Letting Me Down” and the Nashville Friends Gospel Choir on “What Happened to Our Love?” and “Hey Child.”
Little did she know that this lyric in “Letting Me Down,” also released as a video, would prove so prescient in these times – “Everybody’s lonely, oh babe, just look around.” The tune was written by Price and Ivey to a pair of high school friends, about two teenage runaways trying to escape a workaday life.
Price offers this perspective – “Take me back to the day I started trying to paint my masterpiece so I could warn myself of what was ahead. Time has rearranged, it has slowed down, it has manipulated things like it always does…the words to some of these songs have changed meaning, they now carry heavier weight. I’ve seen the streets set ablaze; the sky set on fire. I’ve been manic, heartbroken for the world, heartbroken for the country, heartbroken from being heartbroken again and again. This album is a postcard of a landscape of a moment in time. It’s not political but maybe it will provide an escape or relief to someone who needs it.” There’s much more on this whole backdrop if you’re to Google her article in Vogue.
The opening title track hints that the album is about relationships as she extols a bridge-burning ex-friend.” Twinkle” is a loud foot-stomper as Price sings about the illusions of fame. It’s based on a short conversation with Marty Stuart but starts as a snapshot of Price growing up in small-town Illinois and then goes on an autobiographical journey of sorts. Backstage after a festival Stuart asked, “So, you and the band have been on the road a lot lately, do you all hate each other yet?” After Price’s reply, Stuart eyes her carefully and says, “You wanted to be a star. Twinkle twinkle.” “Stone Me” is another of the released singles, a defiant response to public perception and dealing with expectations. It’s the sassy side of Price, a key ingredient in her immense popularity.
” Hey Child” just brims with Tench’s piano and organ and it vocally swells to large proportions as the choir joins. It was apparently written in a time where many of her East Nashville friends were going through depressing periods, not taking care of themselves. She’s trying to offer some bold encouragement. “Heartless Mind” is the quintessential pop song with its many textures, layers and soaring synths going off in crazy directions and some guitar leads played in reverse. Somehow Price’s immense pipes soar over the aural whirlwind. You’d never guess that Price came up as a so-called country singer when listening to it. We’ve heard similar kinds of inventive production from Simpson before but never with a voice as strong as Price’s. And, rather remarkably her voice wails even more mightily on “What Happened to Our Love?”
“Gone to Stay” is another of the Tench keyboard-driven songs, a radio-friendly tune that just glides along. It was written for her nine-year-old son, an acknowledgment of time wasted, mistakes made – a mature outlook with the line – “the river it runs only one way , and when it’s gone , it’s gone to stay.” “Prisoner of the Highway” is rather obviously about life on the road, another personal reflection written on an airplane shortly after learning she was pregnant and contemplating how to balance home life with a career on the move.
The closer, “I’d Die for You,” written with Ivey, as were many, is the most powerful track on an album of several. Her wall-rattling vocal is still echoing in this head a half hour later. Yet, the subject matter, again is quite serious. Not only is it selflessness expressed for her husband but on other levels it’s about the gentrification of Nashville and the national healthcare crisis. You may want to say it’s about the virus too, but it was recorded long before we were in this state.
This is a high octane record filled with hooks, strong musicianship and maybe just a bit too much production. Through it all, Price has some interesting reflections on motherhood and coping with her rising fame. The clincher, as you might well guess, is the unrelenting power of her voice that just continues to amaze.
