Take It Like A Man

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Amanda Shires lays bare some of her most personal work yet on the singer-songwriter’s seventh studio album and the follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed <i>To the Sunset</i>. Recorded with musician and producer Lawrence Rothman in Nashville, the album ventures into thorny thematic territory, including marital conflict, motherhood, and womanhood. “In my opinion of my own work, this record has a lot to do with vulnerability,” Shires tells Apple Music. “And I think that sharing that part of ourselves is vulnerable, or can be seen as that. And it was a little bit scary for me, but it's also a super confident record.” That vulnerability is mirrored in the production, which is both complex and atmospheric, letting Shires’ lyrics take the spotlight. Standouts include the jubilant “Stupid Love,” which features backing vocals from Brittney Spencer, and “Fault Lines,” a devastating tale of a fracturing relationship. Below, Shires breaks down several of <i>Take It Like a Man</i>’s key tracks. <b>“Hawk for the Dove”</b> “I had witnessed a Cooper's hawk take down a dove some years ago and watched him eat it. It stuck with me. That image has stuck with me. I had no idea some years ago that this was a natural thing with birds, that predatory nature and what, for humans, might be cannibalistic. Anyway, that aside, I have a tendency to go to birds for images. So really the song's a lusty, sexual-desire-y song. And, to me, a little bit predatory in nature, only because it's a reversal where you usually are thinking of that being something a guy would do. And I'm like, ‘No, all people do that.’ And I just wanted to express that from where I'm standing.” <b>“Take It Like a Man”</b> “I've always had a thing for strings. And I've always wanted to do something that sets up the idea of choices, and the consequence of choice for the decisions we make, whether they be in love or music or whatever. I also think that at this point in the project when I recorded it, I was learning to accept my own voice. I don't have to be confident in the way that it sounds, but I'm way more comfortable using it as an instrument at this point. I'm just going to say it. Fuck it. That song is one of my finest pieces of writing, and I'm proud of it.” <b>“Fault Lines”</b> “I considered leaving that song off the record because of the potential questions or thoughts or things that it might provoke. And I told Jason [Isbell] I was struggling with leaving this song on the record. I think I played him a sequence without it. And he said, ‘That's a mistake. You need to leave that one on there.’ And I said, ‘I just don't know about all this.’ And he said, ‘You don't have to answer questions about that song, or you can. You can just share it from your perspective.’ I said, ‘You're right. I won't speak for you. It's my material.’” <b>“Bad Behavior”</b> “That one came together so simply. Lawrence presented me with a couple of ideas for a track that they had been working on. And then I wrote to it and changed some parts to it. And it just spilled right out. It came so easily. And then while I was doing it, I was just thinking, ‘Man, I can hear Brittney [Spencer] singing on this. I hope she will when we get into the studio.’ And then she came and she did and it was the most fun, because that's the one we led with that day. When she came in, you could feel the joy and just the good-time feelings that you're supposed to have in the studio.” <b>“Everything Has Its Time”</b> “Natalie [Hemby] came over and we sat down to write a song on a cold, cold day. And that was the one that came out. We’re both operating in a place where we're both married people. You know what's going on. And it's just so easy to write with her and to communicate without all the unspoken things we don't have to talk about. You can just get to the heart of something with her. So I put it on the record, and it just seemed, to me, the right place to put it, because at the end when you get to that song, it goes naturally back into the first song. I feel like it makes for a good record flipping order, because you have these ups and downs and ups and downs and it keeps the cycle continuous.”

via Apple Music