Grammy-nominee Mickey Guyton on finding her way in ‘predominantly White, male world of country music’

It’s a hard life on easy street / Just white painted picket fences far as you can see /
If you think we live in the land of the free / You should try to be Black like me ...
—Mickey Guyton, “Black Like Me” (2020)

Mickey Guyton could make music history for the second time in four months during next Sunday’s CBS telecast of the 63rd annual Grammy Awards.

The Texas-bred singer and songwriter first made history in December when her stirring, social justice-inspired song, “Black Like Me,” made her the first Black female solo artist to ever earn a Grammy nomination in any country-music category. Her fellow nominees for the Best Country Solo Performance honor include Miranda Lambert for “Bluebird,” Vince Gill for “When My Amy Prays,” Eric Church for “Stick That in Your Country Song” and Brandy Clark for “Who You Thought I Was.”

That is heady company for any rising artist to be in. It’s even more heady for Guyton, who has yet to release a full album and so far has three EPs to her credit, the most recent of which, the six-song “Bridges,” came out in September.

“This wave of whatever is happening to me — I almost don’t feel like I deserve it, to be perfectly honest. I have ‘impostor syndrome’ and I feel like that often,” Guyton, 37, said, during a recent phone interview from her Los Angeles home. She will perform as part of the March 14 telecast, the first Grammy ceremony to ever be held without an audience.

“I’ve dreamed of having a Grammy nomination my whole life. I used to practice (giving acceptance) speeches in my bedroom: ‘Oh my god! Thank you so much to my family and thank you to God. I wouldn’t be here without you ...’ — the whole (speech) thing everybody has done.”

Guyton was nominated for, but did not win, New Female Vocalist of the Year honors at the 2015 Academy of Country Music Awards. Last year, she became the first Black woman to perform her own song as a solo artist in the 54-year history of the same awards show. Her lone accompanist on that 2020 telecast was Keith Urban on piano.

On Feb. 26, Guyton was announced as one of the Country Music Academy’s 2021 nominees for New Female Artist of the Year. While that designation reflects on her breakout 2020 with “Black Like Me,” it is confusing the academy still considers Guyton a “new” artist” six years after she was first nominated New Female Vocalist of the Year by the same academy.

Either way, winning a Grammy is considered a pinnacle of achievement for artists in myriad musical genres, while Grammy nominee status is a point of pride in and of itself. What, then, would a Grammy victory mean to Guyton?

“It would mean the world to me to win, especially this particular award, as it will be historic if I do,” she replied.

“And I hope I do. Because it will encourage more Black people — and people of color — to feel encouraged that they can do this, that they can sing country music and be accepted, and know that there’s someone named Mickey Guyton who will champion them in every way she can.

“I want people to know the doors are open, that I will not be the last solo female country black artist to receive this nomination, and that country music is not dominated by White male artists.”

Except, of course, that it still is — at least for now.

(Courtesy Capitol Records Nashville)

Between 2000 and 2018, there was a 66 percent decline in the number of songs by female artists played on country radio stations in the U.S., according to a 2019 study by Dr. Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The study was based on Billboard magazine’s national Hot Country Songs chart.

Other data indicated that female listeners, who constitute country radio’s key demographic, prefer to hear male artists. With the exception of Darius Rucker and relative newcomers like Kane Brown and Jimmie Allen, those male artists are overwhelmingly White. On Feb. 26, Guyton, Brown, Allen and John Legend all earned nominations for the 56th edition of the Academy of Country Music Awards, which will air April 18 on CBS. It was the most nominations for any edition of the awards in the event’s history.

Guyton’s biggest hit to date, 2015’s self-empowering “Better Than You Left Me,” was her debut single and it rose no higher than No. 34 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart. “Black Like Me,” one of the most timely and moving songs of 2020 in any genre, was virtually ignored by country-music radio stations and was fueled by internet buzz.

Happily, women artists fared better than ever on this year’s Grammy ballot, where 14 of the 20 nominees in the four country-music categories are women or groups that feature women. But Guyton is the only one of those 14 who is Black. That statistic reflects much less on the Grammys, whose 84 categories recognize a broad array of music artists and styles, than on the country-music establishment in general and myopic radio programmers specifically.

“It seems like a lost cause, so we have to try and find another way,” Guyton said. She spent nearly a decade in Nashville trying to conform to country-music’s cookie-cutter tropes, with little success.

“I try and encourage every woman in country music to stop trying to cater to those people in radio, because they won’t support you,” Guyton said. “They will find a reason not to support you, which is kind of criminal. But that’s what discrimination is. As I have told some of my White country music peers, who are women: ‘That is what discrimination feels like’.”

Since country established itself as a stand-alone genre in the late 1920s, only two other Black female solo artists and one Black female group (The Pointer Sisters) have released records that sold enough copies to make the country-music charts.

Never mind that, in 2019, the Country Music Association reported that the number of Black country-music listeners had surged by 55 percent in the previous five years alone. And never mind that the foundation of what became country music owes an enormous debut to Black musicians and that such instruments as the banjo came to the United States from Africa.

In 2007, Rissi Palmer’s “Country Girl” became the first song by a Black woman to make the country charts in 20 years. It followed Dona Mason’s 1987 song, “Green Eyes (Cryin’ Those Blue Tears),” recorded by Mason and Danny Davis of The Nashville Brass, which peaked at No. 54 on Billboard’s Hot Country charts. In 2008, Palmer — who Guyton cites alongside Dolly Parton, LeAnn Rimes and Whitney Houston as a key inspiration — scored two more minor hits, “Hold On to Me” and “No Air.”

The only Top 5 country-music single that featured a Black woman was Earl Thomas Conley and Anita Pointer’s 1986 hit, “Too Many Times,” which hit No. 2. Like Palmer and Mason’s songs, it long pre-dated the Black Lives Matter movement that Guyton cites as a pivotal inspiration for her Grammy-nominated “Black Like Me.”

The heartfelt ballad — which she co-wrote with Nathan Chapman, Fraser Churchill and Emma Davidson-Dillon — is as earthy and unpretentious musically as it is lyrically eloquent. Drawing equally from country, gospel and pop, the song concludes with the lines: Oh, and some day we’ll all be free / And I’m proud to be, oh, Black like me / And I’m proud to be Black like me / I’m proud to be Black like me / Black like me.

A young Mickey Guyton and her grandmother, who introduced her to country music.

(From The Guyton Family)

Finding herself and her truth

Stirring country songs about racial inequality can probably be counted on one hand. Stirring country songs about racial inequality by a Black woman artist who then was nominated for a Grammy can be counted on one finger. Guyton named “Black Like Me” after the landmark 1960 book about segregation and racism by John Howard Griffin. She read it in an African-American studies class while attending college in Los Angeles and still has a copy of the book today.

“You know, I wrote a protest song — but not intentionally,” Guyton said. “It’s just where I was in my life when I wrote ‘Black Like Me,’ and I know there are people at ground zero who are fighting for human rights more than I ever could. And I don’t want to take away from that.”

Capitol Records Nashville, the label Guyton is signed to, did not release her original version of “Black Like Me.” Instead, she quietly posted it on her Instagram page last June 2. The song was added to Spotify’s Hot Country playlist and quickly took on a life of its own. Her pure, powerful singing, bolstered by a gracefully understated arrangement, put the focus on the no-nonsense lyrics. The song’s subsequent success prompted Capitol to re-release her “Bridges” EP with the addition of “Black Like Me.”

“One of the seeds of ‘Black Like Me,” which I wrote almost two years ago, was the stuff I’d been reading and watching about Black Lives Matter, coupled with my own experiences of racism in country music,” Guyton said.

“So, I started writing about that and the marginalization, discrimination and sexual harassment women experience in country music, which nobody writes about. But, not being an activist, I was writing it as an emotional outlet, because I’d held on to those feelings for so long. It wasn’t until I went to therapy that I started releasing that hurt in my music.”

Guyton also credits her husband, attorney Grant Savoy, for helping her find her true identity as an artist. He did so after she had spent years trying to conform to country music’s stifling limitations, with nothing to show for her efforts but more marginalization and frustration.

“I was trying to find a way to fit into what country music (radio) was playing, and I never felt good enough,” said Guyton, whose first child, son Grayson, was born Feb. 8.

“Anything I turned in to my record company was never enough. It was so frustrating. I kept thinking I was insane to keep trying the same thing over and over and expect a different result. And it wasn’t happening. Nothing did, until I started addressing what was happening to me, and to women, within the genre of country music.

“I was trying to navigate my way through this industry and I had a conversation with my husband, who is really smart. I asked him: ‘Why do you think country music, which I’ve been doing for a long time, isn’t working for me?’ And he said: ‘Well, because you’ve been running away from everything that makes you different.’

“It was a gut punch. He called me out for not being me. Before that conversation, up until two or three years ago, I was just literally trying to find my way in the predominantly White male world of country music. That’s really all there is in country music, with a couple of women sprinkled in here or there.”

Determined to reach deep into herself, Guyton took some major steps. One of them was to purge herself from her social media outlets. The other was to make the songs she wanted to, exactly the way she wanted.

“I got rid of everything on my end that didn’t feel true and authentic to me,” she said. “All these people had been trying to make sense of me because I was so different. I realized I had to help them make sense of me and show them who I am. So for the past few years, I have tried to write the most honest songs I could, in real time, about what was happening in my life.

“I am a very empathetic person. No matter what color you are, if you are marginalized, I hurt with you. And I was like: ‘You know what? I don’t think country radio will ever go for me. The songs they want are not the songs I can personally give them. My songs go deeper than trucks, beer and girls. And if they can’t even support White women, what makes me think they’ll support Black women?’

“ ‘Black Like Me’ is about stepping into somebody else’s shoes. I just made something that was honest and that was it. Country music still doesn’t support me; they don’t play my stuff. They haven’t changed. But by being honest with myself and with my music, I have changed — a lot.”

Mickey Guyton at a glance

Born: Candace Mycale Guyton in Arlington, Texas

Age: 37

First musical inspiration: Hearing LeAnn Rimes sing the national anthem at a Texas Rangers home game when Guyton was 5, the same year she began singing at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington.

Other key influences: Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, BeBe & CeCe Winans, Patsy Cline, Rissi Palmer, Ray Charles.

Academia: After graduating from high school in Texas, Guyton moved to California and attended classes at Los Angeles Valley Community College and Santa Monica City College as a business major.

Day jobs: Guyton worked in a Los Angeles bar and as a hostess at a men-only cigar club. “The cigar club was a little icky,” she recalls, “but it enabled me to have a job and go to school full-time.”

Record deal: Guyton was signed by Capitol Records’ country-music division in 2011. She moved to Nashville soon thereafter.

First concert of note: In late 2011, Guyton sang the Patsy Cline classic “Crazy” at the White House for President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. The concert, which was nationally televised by PBS, also featured James Taylor, Kris Kristofferson, Darius Rucker, Lyle Lovett and The Band Perry.

First release: “Unbreakable,” a four-song EP, in 2014

First single: “Better Than You Left Me” in 2015

Ballot debuts: Guyton was nominated in the New Female Vocalist of the Year category for the 2015 Academy of Country Music Awards, where she was nominated last month in the New Female Artist of the Year category.

Grammy nomination: 2021 Best Country Solo Performance for “Black Like Me”

Most recent recording: Her version of Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy”

Recording in a pandemic: “For my upcoming album, I got a lot of recording equipment, learned how to use it and sang from my bedroom in Los Angeles. I sent audio files back and forth to my producer in Nashville. There’s a plug-in where she can listen to me, in real time, singing the vocal, but it’s on a different browser and has a .5 second delay. So, it’s not the same as being in the same room together, but we’ve adjusted.”

63rd annual Grammy Awards

Hosted by: Trevor Noah

With performances by: Lineup to be announced

When: 5 p.m. Sunday, March 14

Where: KFMB Channel 8, airing live from in and around the Los Angeles Convention Center and on the Paramount Plus subscription streaming service

Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony

Hosted by: Jhené Aiko

With performances by: Gregory Porter, Anoushka Shankar, Burna Boy, Rufus Wainwright, Teri Lyne Carrington & Social Science, Igor Levit, and others

When: Noon Sunday, March 14 (awards will be presented in more than 70 of the 84 Grammy categories)

Where: Online only at grammy.com

2021 MusiCares Music on A Mission virtual fundraising concert

When: 5 p.m. Friday

With: John Legend, BTS, Haim, H.E.R., Jhené Aiko and John Legend, plus archival MusiCares appearances by Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks, Usher, Tom Petty, Carole King, Paul McCartney, Shakira, the Jonas Brothers, Ringo Starr, Lionel Richie, Ledisi and others. DJ D-Nice will host a pre-show set.

Where: grammy.com/musicares

Tickets: $25 (general admission) and $324 (includes Master & Dynamics MW07 PLUS True Wireless Earphones); available at support.musicares.org/live