Nashville Didn’t Make Room for Mickey Guyton. So She Made Her Own.
The New York Times
She was failed by the country music industry until the emotional song “Black Like Me” changed her career. Now comes a debut album that proved therapeutic.
Six and a half years ago, Mickey Guyton released her breakout major label single, a grand, sweeping ballad called “Better Than You Left Me.” She sang it with heft and feeling, and the melody was reminiscent of the weepy country ballads of the 1960s. It was a loud, assured knock on Nashville’s door.
Around that time, Guyton would sometimes be invited to red carpet events, and she quickly became familiar with one of the many unspoken limitations the country music business had in store for her: She could find no makeup and hair professionals with experience working with Black skin and hair.
“There were so many red carpets in the very beginning of my career where I hated how I looked. I just made the most out of what I had,” Guyton, 38, said last month over a video call from her home in Los Angeles. “I would always ask, ‘Do they know how to do Black hair? Do they know how to do a Black person’s face?’ Yeah, they haven’t.”
