Amanda Shires doesn’t need more words for blue. But she’d like them. “If you try and find more words in a thesaurus, there aren’t a whole lot,” she says with a laugh, fully aware of the irony. This, after all, is a record bursting with words—poetic, evocative, razor-sharp lyrics that cut to the core of heartache, identity, and the push-and-pull of passion.
Her latest album, Take It Like a Man, doesn’t just lean into vulnerability—it charges at it full speed. “I wanted it to be open,” she says, describing a record that feels intimate yet cinematic. “I wanted it to have a real palette to work with, not just be a monochromatic study of a time in life.” The result is an album that swings wildly between confidence and self-doubt, romance and regret, desire and destruction.
The opening track, Hawk for the Dove, kicks the door down with a sense of defiance. “I wanted that one out first because it was a show of strength,” Shires explains. “This is an incredibly vulnerable record, and I felt like leading with vulnerability first wasn’t going to show the strength that it takes to even be that vulnerable.” There’s a logic to it—declare your power up front, and then you can afford to let your guard down.
But let’s not mistake vulnerability for fragility. Shires makes it clear that this album is about claiming space, both in her music and in her life. “I’d become disenchanted with music,” she admits, “but then I met someone who convinced me otherwise.” That someone was Lawrence Rothman, who produced the record and helped her rediscover a sense of self-acceptance. “It wasn’t that I had a problem with music—it was the people I’d surrounded myself with. They weren’t encouraging me in the right ways.”
If there’s one thing this album has in abundance, it’s passion—though not always the soft, romantic kind. “There’s a dance of passion on this record,” Shires acknowledges, “and not always a positive one.” Songs like Here He Comes tease out the tension of desire, walking the line between attraction and impending disaster. “You can take that song however you want,” she says slyly. “It could be, ‘Oh great, love is coming back into my life!’ Or it could be, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’”
Even the violin—Shires’ weapon of choice—takes on new textures throughout the album. At times, it howls and wails with a raw, menacing quality, more David Lynch than bluegrass. “I play rock and roll on a violin,” she shrugs. “Sometimes you need it in a minor key for it to carry that ‘set your house on fire’ vibe.”
There’s also a quiet devastation on Take It Like a Man, especially in Don’t Be Alarmed and Fault Lines, which hint at the turbulence of her marriage to Jason Isbell. “That was the first song I wrote for the record,” she says of Fault Lines. “I had to decide if I wanted to invite questions, and Jason and I both agreed—yeah, it’s a great song. Put it on there.”
If the album feels like an emotional rollercoaster, that’s by design. “This record is about time, and how it doesn’t move linearly—it moves in a circle,” she says. “That’s why the sequencing feels like these ups and downs. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on things, the ground shifts again.”
And then there’s Bad Behavior, where Shires slips into a playful, almost hip-hop-infused cadence. Credit goes to Brittany Spencer, who sings background vocals across the album. “We were in the moment, just having so much fun in the studio,” Shires recalls. “And then Brittany just goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, [expletive]!’ And I thought—we are not taking this off.”
For all its turmoil and introspection, the album leaves us with Everything Has Its Time, a track that Shires describes as both nostalgic and hopeful. “Sometimes remembering the way things used to be reminds you to bring those good moments into your present,” she says. “Like, remember fun? Let’s do that again.”
By the end of the conversation, Shires offers a parting thought, something simple but profound: “Whatever you’re going through—it’s gonna be okay.”
It’s advice from someone who’s been through it, set it to music, and lived to sing about it.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
