{"id":40967,"date":"2025-07-15T12:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/15\/amanda-shires-processes-divorce-from-jason-isbell-on-nobodys-girl\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T12:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:04:07","slug":"amanda-shires-processes-divorce-from-jason-isbell-on-nobodys-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/15\/amanda-shires-processes-divorce-from-jason-isbell-on-nobodys-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Shires Processes Divorce from Jason Isbell on &#8216;Nobody&#8217;s Girl&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tAfter a long couple years, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/amanda-shires\/\" id=\"auto-tag_amanda-shires\" data-tag=\"amanda-shires\">Amanda Shires<\/a> is ready to re-emerge. Her grandmother and, more recently, her father, died. There have been moments of crying at the gym (\u201clike the Taylor Swift <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EVbtjaWXQVg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">song<\/a>,\u201d Shires says), and moments of feeling so numb she could no longer feel her body.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThere\u2019s also, of course, her divorce from singer-songwriter Jason Isbell, which was initiated in late 2023 and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-country\/jason-isbell-amanda-shires-divorce-finalized-1235294266\/\">finalized<\/a> earlier this year. The divorce, after 10 years of marriage, and the ensuing emotional fallout and period of personal growth and regrowth following it, is the subject of Shires\u2019 new album, <em>Nobody\u2019s Girl<\/em>, out Sept. 26.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut before she shares the album with the world, Shires wants to talk a bit about the period that led to this record. \u201cThe past two years of my life have made it to where I feel like I can talk about anything, at this point,\u201d she says. \u201cI have always used music as a way to explain what\u2019s going on in my life to myself. And it was a big transition to go from, you know, having been in a marriage for a long time and to suddenly find that I\u2019m not. It takes a lot of learning and self-reflection and, for me, a lot of time to process. In the processing, the music came about, and most all of that was a really hard, bad time. There were some moments of joy, as there tends to be, but we never focus on those.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tShires recorded <em>Nobody\u2019s Girl<\/em> in Nashville and Los Angeles, where she took trips for emotionally wrenching sessions with her collaborator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/lawrence-rothman-amanda-shires-plow-that-broke-the-plains-1235030589\/\">Lawrence Rothman<\/a>. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to put any of my friends in the middle of any of the fallout,\u201d says Shires. \u201cSo, I went to L.A. and had a few friends come play on some sensitive material, friends who could put up with a woman crying on occasion, either out of joy or want for tacos or sadness.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Amanda Shires - A Way It Goes (Official Video)\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2GmoXcuBETU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tShe wrote around 30 songs for the record, and some of the earliest ones were so raw, bitter and detailed in their excavation of emotions toward her ex-husband, that, as Shires puts it, \u201cthey ought to be for me and Jesus.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ editors-pick-module lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut the songs that did make the record, after much back and forth, are still brutally honest and forthcoming, about both Shires\u2019 marriage and the emotional sea-change in her life that its fallout kickstarted. There are songs about new flirtations and about global devastation, but mostly there are songs about unbearable heartbreak, regrowth, and survival. It is a record, as the album\u2019s lead single, \u201cA Way It Goes,\u201d (out today) puts it, that is as much about the picking up of the pieces after her life-changing divorce as it is about the events that preceded that split.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tThough there are a couple songs that get brutally detailed about the split (including one called, yes, \u201cThe Details\u201d), <em>Nobody\u2019s Girl<\/em> is also an exercise in narrative restraint and an album that says more by saying very little. \u201cDon\u2019t ask about the deep end,\u201d as Shires sings in \u201cA Way It Goes.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tNearly everything has changed in Shires\u2019 life, and she\u2019s still getting used to much of it. \u201cEven the feeling of not wearing your wedding ring is really strange,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re like, \u2018At my age, wow, when all these people see my hand empty, what are they thinking of me?\u2019 I don\u2019t know! And why do I care?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tCalling her from her home in Tennessee, Shires recently spoke with <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> about her upcoming album, \u201cA Way It Goes,\u201d and what she\u2019s learned about herself after one of the hardest periods of her life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>What was the spark for \u201cA Way It Goes\u201d?<\/strong><br \/>It was everybody asking me what happened. Not everybody was just trying to get gossip: Some people genuinely cared and they want to know how you\u2019re doing. I can\u2019t tell if I\u2019m trying to protect other people or myself, because you are responsible, in a way, or I feel responsible, if I dark somebody out too much, so I didn\u2019t want to do that. Because there are feelings and there are things I said and did and probably shouldn\u2019t have done \u2014 there\u2019s the yelling and mad stage of whatever grief, anger, and bitterness is \u2014 so sometimes I did want to say all those things but I also know, at my core, I\u2019m not that person. And I didn\u2019t want to say that it wasn\u2019t fucking hard, because it was, but my preference would be for you to see me back when I\u2019m a whole person again. So, the whole start of that song were those questions. You feel a little bit like something in an aquarium people want to look at.<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>The MFA graduate in you must\u2019ve felt proud when you came up with the phrase \u201cleviathan of lonely.\u201d<\/strong><br \/>Oh, that was the exact feeling. My fear was, \u201cOh no, no one\u2019s going to know what it means.\u201d And then I was like, \u201cFuck it, <em>I <\/em>do, and it feels exactly like that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>Where were you when you wrote the song?<\/strong><br \/>I went to Los Angeles and sat with Lawrence, and the first thing we started working on was that bed for \u201cA Way It Goes.\u201d It just started coming out and I wasn\u2019t expecting that because it has a hopefulness to it. I didn\u2019t want to write any more songs at that point, but Lawrence said I still had a ways to go. I just went ahead and said \u201cOkay\u201d because I wasn\u2019t in the best place in my life for decision making. There is a beautiful thing that Lawrence Rothman does as a friend, where they can see a person is struggling and knows that the way they get through these things is with their art. The songs that came from the [L.A. session with Rothman], we needed them for the record, but in the moment I didn\u2019t realize that <em>I<\/em> needed them. The point was to finish working through the thoughts or psyche or place that I was in as a way to get me out of it. Like, \u201cCome over here and drown with me in my studio, and I\u2019ll make sure you\u2019re still living when you get out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>Were you listening to other classic divorce records while making <em>Nobody\u2019s Girl<\/em>?<\/strong><br \/>I wasn\u2019t studying other records for the purpose of making this one. There\u2019s a few things that got me through this stuff. That Jack White <em>No Name<\/em> album, I put that on repeat as loud as I could everywhere I went. I mean, <em>on repeat<\/em> enough to annoy the birds. And I listened to D\u2019Angelo and the Vanguard\u2019s [<em>Black Messiah]<\/em> over and over and over. Musically, it felt relaxing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut I did have a pretty upfront conversation with Shooter Jennings because I was trying to take all the songs off the record that had anything to do with the breakup and that period of my life, because I didn\u2019t want people to know that stuff, at first. It feels a little navel gaze-y. And Shooter was like, \u201cYou can\u2019t just not put these songs on the record. That doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d He was like, \u201cJust call me your \u2018divorce consultant\u2019 for the record.\u201d That was also probably during the time where I wasn\u2019t in a good place to make good decisions about my work. It\u2019s good to have friends for that, too. Me and Lawrence were arguing about this, so that\u2019s how the Shooter conversation happened. Shooter is a good friend of mine from way back, and he was the tiebreaker without knowing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>Speaking of other records, did you ever listen to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-album-reviews\/jason-isbell-foxes-in-the-snow-1235286079\/\">Foxes in the Snow<\/a>?<\/em><\/strong><br \/>I put that record on. I appreciate the musicianship.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>In the bio you wrote for the album, you write that the record is about you reclaiming your story. In recent years, had it felt like the Amanda Shires story was one you no longer had control over?<\/strong><br \/>Well, I have a tendency in a relationship to give and give and give and give, because that\u2019s the way, I guess, I show love. It\u2019s not people pleasing; It genuinely makes me happy to give and help. But I also understand how the world works and how you can build a life and career as a woman in the music business and still not have anything to show for it, whether it\u2019s the pay gap or being marketable or packageable, or whatever age you are. There\u2019s no harm in putting eggs in a couple of baskets, and for the joy of a life you\u2019re building, build something great with another person, you know? As far as the story goes, for a woman, you are identified as some kind of role you play: \u201cShe\u2019s a mom\u201d; \u201cShe\u2019s a sister\u201d; \u201cShe\u2019s a divorc\u00e9e.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tBut the story of Amanda Shires, all that, any kind of career envy or jealousy never was a thing. I\u2019ve been working since I was 15 for major legacy acts, and the Highwomen. I love the 400 Unit and everything, and anyway, there was never any of that. I\u2019m not a dummy. But as far as the story, I don\u2019t really know how it reads from the outside. On the inside I don\u2019t feel like I lost control of it, I just felt like, in living it, in hindsight, I applied more of my own force and care into other projects. I would do that for myself, too, but obviously I would put myself last. But when you\u2019re just your own self standing around, there\u2019s nobody else to put first.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>It sounds like you\u2019re saying it could sometimes feel like your story was near the bottom of the pile of other stories you felt like you had to give yourself to?<\/strong><br \/>Rightly or wrongly, I don\u2019t know. But I chose [that], and I live with the consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules trending-in-article lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You\u2019ve written about trust and discord and breakdowns in communication in relationships for a long time. I\u2019m thinking of songs like \u201cIf I\u201d and \u201cHarmless.\u201d Did you feel connected to your past work when writing about this turbulent period in your life?<\/strong><br \/>It felt like, I\u2019m writing about me and the things that draw up this call to put abstractions in a more visual way. It\u2019s taking love, grief, loss, all those big words, and trying to show pictures of that. What is actually outside the name of the feeling? What does that look like? \u201cIf I\u201d is just plain and simple. \u201cHarmless\u201d is very detailed, the details that happened on a very plain kind of evening. For this, I was blending together saying something plainly and then not fussing with every detail. This is going to sound silly, but I try to write things that are interesting to me and that I haven\u2019t heard before and are actually real things in the moment: \u201cA phased golden light\/Rained down from the streetlight\u201d \u2014\u00a0That\u2019s just showing how the light falls on a person. I like to do that kind of thing. I feel like, on this record, I mixed the super detailed thing with the plain, simpler emotion together. Like in \u201cA Way It Goes,\u201d the chorus is so simple, but in some of the verses, there is that kind of imagery. I think that\u2019s what I did on this one better than I\u2019ve done before.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t<strong>You sing about it quite eloquently on the new album, but what do you feel like you\u2019ve learned about yourself throughout the making of this record?<\/strong><br \/>I can actively name the feeling of anxiety when I feel it in my body, which I\u2019ve never experienced so much of in my life. I guess I learned that it\u2019s all manageable, even when you feel like it\u2019s not. Also, even if you think things couldn\u2019t possibly get worse, they definitely can. And I learned, no matter what happens in my future going forward, there\u2019s no place in my life I can imagine not keeping my friends close to me. Nobody ever thinks anything\u2019s going to end, and also nobody really expects people to take sides, but they do. I learned that I have to keep on putting myself first. And I learned that you can exist for six months on a diet of double stuffed Golden Oreos and ros\u00e9 champagne. What else did I learn? I\u2019ve learned that I can face armadillos on my own in the yard. All kinds of things.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/amanda-shires-divorce-album-nobodys-girl-1235384738\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a long couple years, Amanda Shires is ready to re-emerge. Her grandmother and, more recently, her father, died. There have been moments of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":40968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","article","has-excerpt","has-avatar","has-author","has-date","has-comment-count","has-category-meta","has-read-more","thumbnail-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}