{"id":2057084,"date":"2025-09-29T10:04:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T10:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2057084"},"modified":"2025-09-29T10:04:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T10:04:05","slug":"amanda-shires-nobodys-girl-is-one-of-the-years-most-honest-explorations-of-heartbreak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/amanda-shires-nobodys-girl-is-one-of-the-years-most-honest-explorations-of-heartbreak\/","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Shires’ ‘Nobody’s Girl’ is one of the year’s most honest explorations of heartbreak"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two years after a crushing breakup, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires is sitting in an empty hotel bar, her arms shaking as she reads a page from her notebook. She\u2019s been stumbling, she says, in interviews, struggling to explain how she transformed one of the deepest pains of her life into art. <\/p>\n

The work in question, \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl,\u201d fits into a tradition of great heartache albums. And yet it deviates from it. Brazenly honest, pointedly detailed and possessing the sort of vulnerability that feels like an outstretched hand to the listener, Shires\u2019 exploration of grief is part examination of the difficulty of moving on and part work of self-help. \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl\u201d is the album as personal quest \u2014 for healing, for understanding and for being heard. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou probably never get over it, completely,\u201d Shires says of heartbreak. \u201cI don\u2019t think you get over it completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does that scare her? <\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d she says quickly. \u201cIt\u2019s proof of life. It\u2019s proof of taking a risk. It\u2019s proof of heart. You did it. You allowed yourself to love, and to open up to a person and to not be a coward to the most dangerous thing, love.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a topic Shires knew she would have to address, either in song or in interviews. Shires was once one half of a relatively high-profile couple on the Americana music scene. Her late-2023 split with singer-songwriter Jason Isbell garnered tabloid headlines, in part because the fraying of the marriage was captured in the documentary \u201cJason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed.\u201d At first, she tried to avoid cataloging the divorce in song. \u201cI tried to write songs about cars, or anything but anything I was going through,\u201d Shires says.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/picture>\n
\n

Amanda Shires\u2019 album \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl\u201d reflects on her public divorce with fellow musician Jason Isbell. <\/p>\n

(Ethan Benavidez \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

She quickly reversed course. \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl,\u201d which was released Friday, isn\u2019t shy, even referencing by name one of Isbell\u2019s best-known tunes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t write for people. The only thing I tried to keep in mind was Mercy,\u201d Shires says, referring to her young daughter with Isbell. \u201cI wanted to keep in mind that she\u2019ll hear it, and that\u2019s good. What I want her to see is that when you go through hard things, you can make something beautiful out of it. Life doesn\u2019t always go as planned, but you don\u2019t crumble. I mean, you might crumble, but you can find yourself through rebuilding.\u201d <\/p>\n

The interview began with tears. I confess to Shires that I\u2019m more than 2\u00bd years removed from my own traumatic breakup, one that still manages to derail my days. Dozens of self-help books and therapy sessions later, I\u2019m still on the prowl for something that makes sense of it all. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s what drew me to \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl.\u201d While it\u2019s a rootsy album rather than a collection of advice, it\u2019s a cluster of songs that seek to illuminate what often feels unexplainable \u2014 that is, not just the loss of a partner but an imagined life and the reality that we\u2019ve been permanently changed. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where you\u2019re at, but everybody else can keep love,\u201d Shires says. \u201cFor now, I\u2019m not interested in that. If we should choose to do it again, when we have decided to potentially experience it again, why do we do that to ourselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a comment that figures into the title of the album. \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl\u201d is a journey of reclamation. \u201cThe Details\u201d struggles to come to terms with someone\u2019s one-sided point of view \u2014 \u201cNo matter how clear I keep the memories,\u201d Shires sings with fragility, \u201che rewrites them so he can sleep\u201d \u2014 while \u201cNot Feeling Anything\u201d captures a unique post-heartbreak numbness, when, as Shires sings on \u201cLately,\u201d \u201cthe silence is too noisy and the music is too loud.\u201d Throughout, it\u2019s an elegant work, drifting from slow-burning waltzes to atmospheric explorations. <\/p>\n

The album is also a recognition that while heartbreak has confounded poets since the beginning of time, it remains an unknown. Our culture expects us to, after a relatively short period, just get over it, as if a few nights out on the town will do the trick. That\u2019s not how it works, and that\u2019s where Shires\u2019 songs such as the stark \u201cMaybe I\u201d and the warm piano ballad \u201cLiving\u201d come in, compositions about being back home, alone, spilling wine and surrounded by the ghosts of a former lover. \u201cJust existing can be hard,\u201d Shires sings. \u201cMaybe living is an art.\u201d <\/p>\n

I joke to Shires that, as a man, most often the unsound advice I have received is to simply go look for a rebound.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Amanda <\/picture>\n
\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where you\u2019re at, but everybody else can keep love,\u201d says Amanda Shires, whose new album, \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl,\u201d deals with heartache. <\/p>\n

(Ethan Benavidez \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

\u201cOh, my God. That\u2019s what people suggested to me too,\u201d Shires says. \u201cLike, go on a date or whatever, and I went on a date. It just feels like you\u2019re trapped in a weird interview prison. Suddenly, you have to tell someone to not eat off your plate. That\u2019s not cool, man.\u201d <\/p>\n

Shires asks herself questions throughout \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl,\u201d often as to whether she\u2019s doing OK and musing at one point that she may never be all right. But it\u2019s also full of colorful songwriting, of Shires doing tarot with a mermaid, wandering New York listening to Billy Joel or catching her now-former partner behaving nonchalantly on a home security camera. The latter tidbit starts \u201cPiece of Mind,\u201d a growler of country-leaning rock tune in which Shires is alternately spiteful, vengeful and longing, playing call-and-response with a scorched-earth fiddle because there\u2019s no one else to answer her. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you got to get closure or anything like that, but it\u2019s the result of not getting closure,\u201d Shires says. \u201cI used the writing to help myself get through this. I felt for a while I had this thing where I wanted closure. I wanted to say some things. There was a time where you had a best friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shires pauses, attempting to joke that it\u2019s the laundry detergent that\u2019s brought her to tears. After a moment, though, she regains her composure. \u201cWhat I realized is what you put your big girl pants on and make your own,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s my favorite song to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

One song, Shires says, that she\u2019ll never perform live is \u201cThe Details.\u201d When it comes up during conversation, she turns to her notebook, ripping out a page that she says she wrote that afternoon discussing the number. It\u2019s the song on the album that most directly addresses her breakup, and does so unflinchingly with a sorrowful piano. \u201cHe scared me then, he still scares me now,\u201d Shires sings, and she is worried how that will come across. To love is to be vulnerable, and it also can come with a share of fear and rejection. <\/p>\n

\u201cSurely you understand that line,\u201d Shires says, her arms trembling. I do, I say, relating to the song\u2019s sense of dread and eradication. <\/p>\n

\u201cI decided to write it out because it seems like a rude thing to say,\u201d she says, and then Shires begins reading from her notes. \u201cThe scared part isn\u2019t about the physical fear,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s about the emotional fear of being rewritten. And the scared part, for me, is being afraid because being erased is being treated like you never mattered. A lot of artists and writers have a fear of being misrepresented and erased, and that\u2019s why that is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Amanda <\/picture>\n
\n

Amanda Shires\u2019 \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl\u201d is a journey of reclamation.<\/p>\n

(Ethan Benavidez \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n

The song references Isbell\u2019s 2013 tune \u201cCover Me Up.\u201d I didn\u2019t ask Shires about the nod to the track that was supposedly written for her, an unguarded acoustic number exploring the excitement and anxieties of a fresh passion, but she offered an explanation. \u201cWhy name-check the song? Because that became kind of a mythology. And myth isn\u2019t always truth. I didn\u2019t write it to tear anything down. I just wrote it to stand in my story. It\u2019s not a response to anyone else\u2019s work. If someone hears a dialogue between them, that\u2019s because both me and my ex lived in the same marriage, just differently. My job isn\u2019t to counter. It\u2019s to tell my truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shires pauses and says, \u201cThat\u2019s what I wrote down for that. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s any good or not,\u201d and then hands the page to me for safe keeping. \u201cThe Details\u201d is a crucial moment on the album, an acknowledgment, with a dour fiddle and harp, that communication may be forever broken. And that\u2019s when true heartbreak sets in. But that\u2019s also when one can begin to explore the concept of healing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the process of this as I was writing it,\u201d Shires says. \u201cThis is not about my divorce. It\u2019s about what happened exactly after. It\u2019s the aftermath. A lot of people write about it as the experience is completely over. But I was going through it. Breakup songs are usually this and that when the person is wholly the new version of themselves with their scars and all. It took me a second to get OK with the fact that what I was writing was the process of trying to navigate this. So there\u2019s true things I said that I left on the record.\u201d <\/p>\n

When, I ask Shires, did she begin to feel sort of normal, with the acknowledgment that it\u2019s a continued process? She offers one post-breakup tip: games.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople do pick sides when these things go down, and I found myself with less friends than I realized,\u201d Shires says. \u201cAnd my neighbor, who I didn\u2019t even know, I went to retrieve some mail, and my neighbor was like, \u2018Do you play backgammon?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

No, she says she told him, asking him if it were like the dice game craps. Shires would become so transfixed that she later hired a backgammon coach and joined a local league in Nashville, the city in which she resides. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s stimulating and all-encompassing,\u201d Shires say. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s a person there that you\u2019re playing against. This sounds cheesy as hell, but the game is all about what you do with the roll. You\u2019re not gonna get good ones. Somehow that lined up. I had something to do and a place to meet people. I had a new thing that was my own.\u201d <\/p>\n

And if backgammon doesn\u2019t work? \u201cYou\u2019ve got to kind of, not psych yourself up,\u201d she says, \u201cbut you\u2019ve got to fake it till you make it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Those were words, I tell Shires, my therapist had told me just last week. I\u2019ve found there\u2019s also another option: One can spend a few nights with the authenticity of \u201cNobody\u2019s Girl.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years after a crushing breakup, singer-songwriter Amanda Shires is sitting in an empty hotel bar, her arms shaking as she reads a page from her notebook. She\u2019s been stumbling, she says, in interviews, struggling to explain how she transformed one of the deepest pains of her life into art. The work in question, \u201cNobody\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2057085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2057084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Amanda-Shires-Nobodys-Girl-is-one-of-the-years-most.com2Fff2F912F6e5bcfe34930b73c45eafefa-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2057084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2057085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2057084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2057084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2057084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}