Country Music Needs Mickey Guyton More Than She Needs Country Music

It’s remarkable that Mickey Guyton has stayed committed to country music at all. Those ovations are quickly becoming part of an average Guyton day: In the past year, she’s become the first solo Black female country artist nominated for a Grammy, the first Black woman to co-host the Academy of Country Music Awards, and, as announced this past week, the recipient of a “Breakout Artist of the Year” award at the upcoming Country Music Television Artists of the Year show. “All American” starts off in the previous song’s childhood framework, in the manner of a familiar country “list” song about small-town life—“the lines on the interstate, the dust on a backroad,” “a Friday-night football game”—but soon starts bridging “country” and “urban” by paralleling stars in Texas to lights in New York, then escalating to cross-racial signifiers with “Daisy Dukes, dookie braids/ James Brown and James Dean.” It promotes inclusion by talking about all Americans having “the same stars, the same stripes,” suitable for the girl whose first favorite country song was LeeAnn Rimes singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Picking up on the “All American” line, “We’re different in a million ways,” track 3 is called “Different.” Its girl group/Motown-lite bop feel goes a bit far in a Meghan Trainor everything-positivity direction for me. But they’re also Guyton’s tribute to the emotional support system she has in her husband, as she implores her partner to open up to her on “Lay It On Me” and celebrates their closeness in “Higher” and “Dancing in the Living Room.” With these foundations of both self and relationship established, Guyton goes on to ask listeners whether they’re prepared to hear the real hard stuff on “Do You Really Wanna Know?” And then she brings it with the central triptych of “Black Like Me,” “Words,” and “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” If you want the highs of the previous three love songs, she tells country listeners, you have to take the lows, too, as you would a heartbreak song from any country bro. Now Guyton circles back with “Indigo,” which answers the opening imperative to “Remember Her Name” by offering another eponym to bear in mind, an alias that might encompass Guyton more fully: “Hey, we haven’t met, just call me Indigo/ I’m bluer than blue for reasons you don’t know.” Indigo is a word long tied to African-American culture—think of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo”—with overtones about skin color and, as Curtis Mayfield sang it, “We people who are darker than blue.” As this record’s twilight theme, “Indigo” rekindles the emotion of “Black Like Me,” but in a more understated, intimate mode.