Amanda Shires Explores Roles as Woman, Wife, and Mother on New Album ‘Take It Like a Man’

Amanda Shires has announced her next solo flight with a new album, Take It Like a Man.

“Take It Like a Man” album cover

Shires, a founding member of The Highwomen supergroup and frequent collaborator with Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, has put out several singles over the past few years, including 2020’s “The Problem,” which depicted a couple’s harrowing conversation about abortion, and 2021’s For Christmas (ND review).

On Take It Like a Man, out July 29 on ATO Records, Shires explores a new sound with producer Lawrence Rothman, who’s previously worked with Angel Olsen and Courtney Love. But the album features familiar collaborators, too, including Isbell, her husband, on guitar and vocal guests and Highwomen extended family members Brittany Spencer, Maren Morris, and Natalie Hemby. The 11 songs document Shires’ life as a woman, a wife, and a mother, during turbulent times.

The first single from Take It Like a Man, Shires’ seventh album, is “Hawk for the Dove,” with a video filmed in Santa Monica, California, and directed by Shires and Deren Ney. “I want people to know that it’s okay to be a 40-year-old woman and be more than just a character in somebody else’s life,” Shires said in press release. “The song and the visual representation of the song deal with the emotions that turn prey into predator.”

Shires was featured in No Depression’s Spring 2019 “Standards & Stanzas” journal in a story titled “Behind the Sunset” about how poetry and songwriting have intersected in her life. That issue is available in print or digitally here.

Read our review of Shires’ previous (non-holiday) solo album, To the Sunset, here.