Songfacts®:

• "Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down" was released by Margo Price as the lead track from her sixth full-length album, Hard Headed Woman. The song blends alt-country roots with Price's signature storytelling and defiant spirit.
• The phrase "Don't let the bastards get you down" has a rich history. Margaret Atwood famously slipped a faux-Latin version ("Nolite te bastardes carborundorum") into The Handmaid's Tale, where it serves as a small but potent act of rebellion against oppression. Price attributes her personal inspiration to Kris Kristofferson; he whispered the line to Sinéad O'Connor after she was booed during a Bob Dylan tribute concert in New York, two weeks after she tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. Kristofferson had recorded a track titled "Don't Let the Bastards (Get You Down)" two years earlier for his Third World Warrior album.
• Price co-wrote the track with her husband and regular collaborator Jeremy Ivey, along with country stalwart Rodney Crowell. There's also a posthumous writing credit for Kristofferson, a nod to the line that sparked it all.
• "Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down" was produced by Matt Ross-Spang and recorded at the historic RCA Studio A in Nashville. Price and Ross-Spang go way back, having worked together on her first two albums, Midwest Farmer's Daughter (2016) and All American Made (2017). It is the first album Price has recorded in Nashville; a city she has called home since 2003.
• The song is a rallying cry for the worn-down, the outnumbered, and the told-to-sit-down-and-behave crowd. "I always hope to do like Johnny Cash did, which is speak up for the common man and woman," Price said, summing up her mission.
  
  She admits she's weathered her share of threats, anger, and vitriol, all for speaking from a place of love, and decided for Hard Headed Woman to rebuild from the ground up.
• Directed by Ian Blair, the music video finds Price holding court at a dive bar, tearing through town on a four-wheeler, and then treating the vehicle to a decidedly glam car-wash makeover. Blair's no stranger to the Margo Price universe: he produced her "Hey Child" video and was also part of the crew behind "All American Made."
• Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey first started writing "Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down" in the 2010s, originally for a film script loosely based on Price's life. The movie never got made, but the song survived. Years later, they revisited it with Rodney Crowell's help, polishing it into the version fans know today.
• Margo Price and Kris Krisfofferson became firm friends after meeting at a Willie Nelson Fourth of July picnic in 2016. She joined him and Ben Haggard for a memorable performance of "Why Me" at The Basement East in Nashville in 2018.
  
  "He was such a literary man, he had such a way with words, but he really lived his principles too," Price told Uncut magazine. "He paid the price for taking a stand. He's my North Star in so many ways."