“Everybody wants to know / how I feel and what I think,” Margo Price sings in her emotive, bittersweet twang, halfway through her third full-length record. On That’s How Rumors Get Started, Price has committed her genre-bending rock-and-roll show to record for the first time, stretching out into sky-high soft-rock, burning psychedelic rock ballads, stomping road songs, and sprinkles of pop.
That’s How Rumors Get Started was produced by Sturgill Simpson, and co-produced by Margo Price and David Ferguson. The ten new, original songs were primarily recorded at EastWest Studios (Pet Sounds, “9 to 5”), during the week Margo received her Best New Artist GRAMMY nomination, in the middle of her pregnancy with daughter Ramona. The historic band heard on each of the tracks includes guitarist Matt Sweeney (Adele, Iggy Pop), bassist Pino Palladino (D'Angelo, John Mayer), drummer James Gadson (Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye), and keyboardist 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.” The album is Margo Price’s debut for Loma Vista Recordings.
On the album’s delay and the emotional decisions she’s faced these past three months, Margo says: “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. Sending love to everyone out there and hope I see you down the highway.”