Margo Price Crafted New Album ‘That’s How Rumors Get Started’ With ‘a Lot of Clarity’
Margo Price's third studio album, That's How Rumors Get Started, is a change of pace for the singer-songwriter. The 10-track project, out Friday (July 10) on Loma Vista Recordings, is the culmination of a period of "a lot of clarity, a lot of sobriety," the singer tells Jezebel in a new interview.
Price was pregnant with her third child -- daughter Ramona, born in June of 2019 -- while recording her new record. "I found myself really using it to my benefit,” she says to Esquire.
In some senses, That's How Rumours Get Started is emblematic of a period change for Price: She recorded in Los Angeles, with her friend and fellow artist Sturgill Simpson as producer, while in between label deals (Price's first two albums were released via Third Man Records; this new one comes from Loma Vista Recordings). She leaned fully into '70s-influenced rock, rather than more traditional country, and used an ace studio crew, rather than her live band, to record.
“Change is good," Price reflects. "When you do the same thing over and over, you’re going to get the same outcome. My goal is to transform.”
To Jezebel, she adds, "I've always admired artists that could adapt and change and not make the same record over and over ... It was really important ... to kind of make a little bit of a sonic change. I kinda wanted to show people that I'm not some one-trick pony that just sings country songs."
At the same time, much of what was different was also familiar: Price and Simpson are old friends, and she's recorded without a label's backing before. Price created her first album, 2016's Midwest Farmer's Daughter, independently, selling her car and pawning wedding ring to pay for time at Memphis' famous Sun Studio.
"I wanted to do what I did the first time around,” Price tells Esquire. "I wanted to make my creative peace and not have anyone from a label sitting there and giving me their opinion on songs or mixes. I just wanted to make a record, then find the best place for it.”
Change, Price knows, is a good thing. Stagnation just isn't her style.
"I think that you have to keep changing and moving in order to grow, because I see a lot of people just using the same formula, the same producer every time," she reflects to Vulture. "I’m doing this because someone else did it and it’s successful. It’s boring."