Amanda Shires
Amanda Shires is the voice of reason you’d want in your corner, but only if the support is mutual. She is no one’s wife, no one’s backing musician and no one’s punch line. And right now, the only person she’s fighting for is herself.
Her ninth solo album Nobody’s Girl, out Friday via Silver Knife/ATO, explores what’s left in the wake of a love that’s gone away: hard memories and frustration, coupled with growth and new beginnings. Shires made the record with frequent collaborator Lawrence Rothman, who also produced her 2022 album Take It Like a Man. It listens like a work of gothic literature — Shires seems to haunt a space once hallowed, recounting something good gone by. But the story she’s telling isn’t a sad one — it’s proof of life, a vision of rebirth and reinvention. She hopes that listeners come away knowing that if she survived, they can too.
“I would hope the reaction would be, like, maybe they could find some acceptance in themselves, if they are lacking it, for the way that surviving things can be messy and beautiful,” Shires says. “And that if you’re beginning again, it’s possible, even though it sometimes feels like it’s not.”
Like any act of survival, recording Nobody’s Girl wasn’t an easy process. The piano-driven lead single “A Way It Goes” wasn’t written until after Shires thought the record was finished.
“Lawrence, my producer, insisted that I wasn’t done with my record yet,” she recalls, “even though I was well past 20 songs written, and even though I didn’t feel like I needed to write any more or had any more to say. They were insistent, and I’m grateful for that because I wasn’t done yet.”
Rendered as an atmospheric ballad, with ambient instruments floating around the crisp backbeat, “A Way It Goes” is one hell of a reintroduction to Shires’ world. In the wake of Shires’ divorce from fellow musician Jason Isbell, one might have certain expectations about the contents of an ensuing “breakup” record. Shires makes it clear that while her life has changed, she is still the main character of this story. It’s not about him, it’s about her and what she has become and is becoming. Shires sets the tone for the record from her first lines: “I can show you how he left me / Paint a picture, growing flowers for nobody / But I’d rather you see me thriving / Vining my way back up.”
“The first song is key to this record because it sets up my discomfort in the subject matter,” she explains, “but also the kind of pride I have in myself for finding myself again and taking my identity back — in being my own, belonging to myself.”
Much of the record deals with growth and rebirth, but in that process, Shires doesn’t shy away from the reminders of what was. In many ways, it feels as though she’s whispering into the ears of those she’s lost — not angry, not screaming. Amid chugging guitars, Shires says it herself in the fiery but restrained “Piece of Mind”: “If you think I could hate you, you’re wrong.” She’s taking the high road, even if others don’t. She continues, “But that was a real fucked-up way to leave.”
Some of the more affecting lines on the record are small observations, material objects taking power over Shires’ perception — a handful of jelly beans, a glimpse of footage from a doorbell camera, an old kitchen table. In these moments, Shires is a specter, viewing her past and present from a higher point of view.
“I was in a long-term relationship and marriage, and when you live in that space, it does at times feel haunted, and you do have to do things to make the space your own,” she says. “And to do that, I think not only takes time with it, but it takes courage and it takes reflecting. … I reflected on them so much, like trying to identify what I did wrong or right, and then also, like, ‘How do I walk through these spaces? What do I need to do?’
“So I don’t feel like there’s something missing or that [I need to] keep the memories from flooding back too much and all that. And there are little things I did. And I would like to say they’re helpful. But only to an extent, because you can only really clean so much, and you can only really repaint the same thing white so many times. But a lot of it too is — just as cliché as it sounds — is taking the time to heal and process.”
Shires can see things more clearly now, and she’s moving on to something brighter. She’s taking Nobody’s Girl on the road across North America with Disney stars turned folk-rock singers Aly & AJ. All the while, she is focused on becoming more and more fully herself.
“I am proud of myself for getting through it, and finding peace with myself and the closure that I needed … and the beauty that comes in making something from a time that feels super dark. I not only lost my relationship, but I also lost my grandmother and my dad, and then it was like one thing after another. But in the end, here I stand.”
