Hey Child

Album: That's How Rumors Get Started (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • In 2010, Margo Price and husband Jeremy Ivey lost their two-week-old son, Ezra, to a heart condition. The couple took to drinking and partying to cope with their loss. During this soul-searching anthem, Price reflects on her struggles with depression and substance abuse as a result of the tragedy.

    "We were playing shows... and occupying most of the bars in East Nashville. We had begun hanging with a rowdy group of degenerate musician friends and partying harder than the Rolling Stones. We were outsiders to what was going on with mainstream Nashville in every sense, and it was the beginning of my bourbon-drinking phase," Price told People. "The song was about how many of our talented friends were drinking and partying their talents away, but after a few years had passed, we realized it was just as much about us as our friends."
  • Price wrote "Hey Child" in 2012 and originally performed it with Ivey in their rock band, Buffalo Clover. It was producer Sturgill Simpson who persuaded her to revisit it for That's How Rumors Get Started.

    "Funny enough, I initially didn't want to re-record 'Hey Child,'" she admitted. "But Sturgill was producing the record and he convinced me to. When I brought it in to play for the band they were all blown away by the song - that made me fall back in love with it."
  • Price recorded That's How Rumors Get Started in Los Angeles and laid down tracks while pregnant with her daughter Ramona. (Her older sibling Judah is the late lamented Ezra's twin brother).

    Sturgill Simpson offered some backing vocals and assembled a band with Zwan guitarist Matt Sweeney, prolific session bassist Pino Palladino, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye drummer James Gadson, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench.
  • The Nashville Friends Gospel Choir back Price and her band on the song.
  • Kimberly Stuckwisch directed the music video, which tells the true story of how Price ended up in Davidson County jail for three days in 2018 after getting drunk and crashing her car. Stuckwisch also collaborated with the songstress on her "All American Made" and "Letting Me Down" clips.
  • Kimberly Stuckwisch said she used the camera's gaze to represent Price's mind while exploring "the perpetual cycle of addiction and depression, the scars you carry around with you from its relentless push and pull, and the daily struggle to regain control of what has left you powerless."

    The director added that the visual starts off with Price's mind (the camera) "in full control as it pushes and pulls her through the moments and memories that led her to this dark reality. It's only when she decides to take back control and to face her demons head-on, is she able to run back through her past and out the door, finally breaking free of the relentless cycle."

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