Nobody's Girl

Breakup albums are a long-standing tradition among singer/songwriters in both country and rock, and when someone with a notable musical reputation announces theyre splitting up with their partner, its hard not to look for hints of what went wrong in their next batch of songs. Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires became alt-countrys leading power couple when they married in 2013, and both of their careers would skyrocket in the ten years that followed. In 2023, HBO aired a documentary, Jason Isbell: Running with Our Eyes Closed, that, among other things, followed Isbell and Shires as they struggled through a rough patch in their marriage. While the film tried to put a hopeful spin on their troubles, by the end of that year Isbell filed for divorce, and his 2025 album Foxes in the Snow was a spare, acoustic effort full of mournful songs about faded love and more optimistic tunes about new beginnings. If anyone was wondering how Shires felt about the split, shes issued a stunningly blunt song cycle about the breakup and its consequences, 2025s Nobodys Girl. To say Shires isnt happy about the public perception of their divorce crashes the boundaries of understatement; the song "Piece of Mind" begins with the words "If you think I could ever hate you, you’re wrong/But that was a real f-ed up way to leave," and thats far from the bitterest bit of wordplay here. (Other complaints range from his lack of gratitude and commitment in the wake of her successful intervention that saved his life and career to her contention that hes a slob who never picks up the towels.) Its hard not to see Isbell as the villain in Nobodys Girl, though Shires bile seems less about bad-mouthing her ex than putting her side of a rather public breakup on the record. Nobodys Girl is her story, her memoir of an agonizing period in her life, and shes not afraid to tell it. Shires uses her anger, hurt, and wounded pride to fuel a lot of soul searching thats bold, literate, and deeply felt. Lawrence Rothman, who produced Shires excellent 2022 effort Take It Like a Man, also helped her record Nobodys Girl, and while it lacks the eclecticism of the former LP, this has a tighter focus and Shires and her accompanists have given these songs thoughtful, muscular music just as powerful as the words. Whether Isbell is a nice guy (as hes generally perceived) or a real bastard isnt the point of Nobodys Girl -- these songs are here to tell us Shires memories and feelings are just as important as anyones, and its her duty to herself to tell the world the details of these scenes from a marriage, both as art and as a public act of healing. Nobodys Girl is sometimes tough to listen to as Shires pulls no lyrical punches, but its never less than compelling, fearless, and brilliantly crafted. As an act of musical exorcism, its breathtaking. ~ Mark Deming