Mickey Guyton Plots Debut Album, ‘Remember Her Name’
A long time coming for one of country music's best vocalists...
Grammy-nominated country singer/songwriter Mickey Guyton has unveiled the title of her highly anticipated debut album: Remember Her Name. The record will be released via Universal Music Group Nashville this Fall.
In an interview with The New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich, Guyton says the full-length project will detail “every experience that I went through during the ten years that I was in Nashville.”
“It’s a closing of this chapter of my life,” she notes, comparing it to Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, ‘Becoming.’
The article also shared that several of its songs “explicitly address the racism and the sexism that she’s lived through,” although a big part of it will focus on Guyton’s journey to finally finding peace as well.
Additionally, it was noted that Guyton’s full-length record—which arrives long after her 2015 debut single “Better Than You Left Me”—will feature the powerhouse vocalist delivering her personal stories over traditional country imagery and production, which include “pedal steel, Guyton’s Texas drawl, recollections of church pews and dance floors and Friday-night football.”
Guyton’s rooted identity today is not something she has had all along. For years, as a Black country recording artist, Guyton was instructed by executives to record certain types of country songs to augment her music’s plausibility and authenticity.
“Everybody kept telling me, ‘Whatever songs you write, they need to be super country, because people are gonna think that you’re not genuine.’ I wanted this opportunity so badly that I was ready to do whatever it took,” the singer told The New Yorker. “But every time I turned something in—‘No, that sounds too pop.’ I was trying to figure it out. You want me to put a fiddle on this song? Twang it out more? What do you want? Meanwhile, I’m watching the whole industry put out records that had all these R&B cadences, these R&B phrases.”
She added, “I was frustrated, and not just by my own story. But God forbid anyone say anything, because, if you say something, then country radio is gonna cancel you, they’re not gonna play your stuff,” before referencing The Chicks.
In the article, The New Yorker also highlighted two of the album’s song titles and lyrics. They include “Love My Hair,” where Guyton reflects in hindsight, “If I could go back to twelve / I would tell myself / Straight up or down / Baby, that’s your crown,” and the powerful lyric, “We got the same stars, same stripes,” in “All American.”
Remember Her Name will follow Guyton’s Bridges EP, which included the Grammy-nominated “Black Like Me,” “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” and the current single, “Heaven Down Her.”
While you wait for more news on Remember Her Name, read more about Guyton’s personal story and past struggles as a country singer here.
