11/15/2023 0 Comments Life happened country song![]() ![]() I’m just begging people in my industry to want to stand with me and figure this out. But if you’re speaking the truth in love… I’m not here to shame anybody. I felt like I was walking on eggshells a lot. When you’re already a woman and already not getting played on radio, the last thing you want to do is say one more thing to stop them from wanting to play you altogether. And part of it was seeing the cancel culture, which started within country music during the Dixie Chicks. Where did you feel the pressure to stay silent coming from? Before I wrote “Black Like Me,” I was already feeling these feelings of sadness, of being within an industry that frowns upon you speaking about injustice happening in society. And this song is just saying: step outside of your shoes for a second and see what it is like to be someone else and then you’d understand. The idea came from a book that I read, “Black Like Me,” that was written by a white man in the 1960s, John Howard Griffin, who darkened his skin through radiation and went to the deep South to see what it was like to be a Black man in America. I thrive in uncomfortable conversations, because out of those comes healing, and we can get better. There is a lot of pain that I’ve been feeling for a long time, and that I’ve felt unable to talk about because people don’t like uncomfortable conversations. That song was so close to my heart with the things I had been dealing with within the industry, and that I’ve dealt with through my life. The response has been quite shockingly big for me. You were holding on to “Black Like Me” for your album, but you decided to put it out now. Then something happened where everybody only wanted light and fluffy party songs, and it was really difficult for me to find my footing in that. I had forgotten that feeling, because that’s what made me love country music - because they sang real songs - and was why I wanted to be a part of this genre. To be frank, I was inspired by pop music and how honest they have been (recently) in their music. I hope it encourages everybody else to really start singing their truth. It’s like God aligned all of this he put this music on my heart. There was no media strategy to get me to this point. GUYTON: It wasn’t something I was intentionally trying to do. Then “Black Like Me” really upped the ante. VARIETY: You already had what seemed like the most sobering country single of the year when you addressed systemic sexism with “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” back in February. She spoke with Variety from her apartment in Los Angeles, where she’s working on a new Universal Music Nashville release to come out this fall. ![]()
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