Mickey Guyton

Epiphanies are a gift. It's what you do once you've had one that makes them meaningful.

Mickey Guyton is making hers count on her electrifying full-length debut album Remember Her Name.

The music, grooves, melodies, and lyrics of its 16 songs lay bare the heart of a woman and the life she began to lead once she decided to let her truth set her free. That freedom has been mesmerizingly translated into intimately confessional ballads of piercing power including "What Are You Gonna Tell Her?" and "Black Like Me" and also fizzy ditties like "Rosé" as well as the sultry "Dancing in the Living Room" that remind us that playfulness and passion are necessary partners to reflection. Remember Her Name finds Guyton celebrating her truest voice in ways that will resonate with any listener who has loved, lost, struggled, laughed and lived.

"It's crazy that the album is a story essentially," says Guyton of the project that has been both three years and, in some ways, a lifetime in the making.

"I was just writing and writing," she says. "I didn't even know what the album meant or what it was going to be, when I was writing these songs. I just started writing songs about my feelings."

The Texas singer-songwriter understandably had a lot of those having arrived in Nashville a decade ago and been lauded for her powerhouse voice. While some success and accolades followed, including her 2015 hit "Better Than You Left Me," barriers within the industry seemed insurmountable.

Until one day, she decided to be herself and not the woman Nashville expected her to be.

"I had a conversation with my husband three years ago asking him why my career wasn't really taking off and why it wasn't working out for me," recalls Guyton. "He said it was because I was running away from everything that made me different."

The lightbulb officially clicked on. The positive consequences were almost immediate on every level. Guyton began writing songs that spoke to powerful truths and gained recognition for them, including a Grammy nomination for "Black Like Me," making her the first black female solo artist to earn a Grammy nomination in a country category. Critical plaudits also poured in from The New York Times, L.A. Times, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and more with NPR proclaiming succinctly, "Guyton raises the rafters and distills emotion with impeccable clarity. Her high notes thrill, her nuance in storytelling captivates. A star for our times claims her place."

You can hear Guyton, who was preparing to be a new mom amidst the maelstrom of 2020, staking that claim on the title track, a triumphant anthem of self-assurance: "Where did you lose the girl with no fear?/Oh, she never left/Take a good look, she's right in the mirror/Don't let yourself forget/ Remember the fire/Remember her face...Remember the girl that didn't let anything get in her way."

She decided to make that song the title track “to remind all of us, including myself, about the strength we have inside that we don’t always know is there,” says Guyton. “As women, there are so many times where we lose ourselves and our dreams as we're growing up and living life. This song is about a woman rediscovering herself and what made her strong. That is my life story, discovering my own power, and that felt like the right title for the whole album since it explains all the facets of my story.”

And there are, it turns out, many facets. "I was covering so many and such different points on the spectrum with all the music that I was creating. I was writing songs about my marriage and my life and playful things but, at the same time, I was writing songs about social injustice and life experiences that were important to me."

Those experiences included being “Different”—a snappy ditty about how our differences contribute to what makes us all special and unique in our own ways— and “Higher”— a joyous ode to taking love to that next level and —"All American” — a tune she penned, ironically, with three Canadians.

“I started seeing the underlying tone of this album and I was just trying to figure out, what’s the missing part,” says Guyton of lying awake at night as she mapped the tracklist in her head. “I thought, ‘Okay, I'm discussing racial injustice, I'm talking about the oppression of women, I'm talking about loving being different, I'm talking about having fun and loving my rosé.’ I basically covered all the topics, but there was one that was missing, and it was a song like ‘All American.’ I wanted to show that there are all different meanings and layers to the idea of being All American, from the starry Texas sky to the New York City lights, no one region or group has cornered the market on what it means to be American.”

That was one of nine tracks on Remember Her Name on which Guyton worked with trusted collaborator Karen Kosowski. “When I started finally writing my truth, Karen was one of the first producers I wrote with when I had made that shift,” says Guyton of the Canadian songwriter-producer who has enjoyed major success north of the border. “She's one of the first producers where I could hear myself. So often I was being produced by

men before who automatically assumed, ’Oh, she can sing. We don’t really need to work on the vocal.’ They

always focus on the music. Karen was one of the first people that completely focused on my voice.”

That focus pays off on a number of tracks including the compelling piano ballad “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” which questions the truths of what we tell girls about their dreams, the sultry “Dancing in the Living Room,” one of the most sensual songs she’s released, and a sparkling, crisp cover of Beyoncé‘s “If I Were a Boy.”

The album comes full circle with an updated rendition of her first single “Better Than You Left Me.” “This whole journey started with that song, which was one of the first songs I wrote when I moved to Nashville,”

recalls Guyton of the start of her journey. “It was the song that jump started people even paying attention to me. It had such a different meaning back then than it does now. I wanted to rerecord it as a rebirth. I initially wrote that song about an ex-boyfriend that I was devastated over, but now that ex-boyfriend means nothing to me. Now, this song means so much more. It's about life and what has happened to me. It was really

important for me to end the album with that. It's renewed. I'm renewed.”

Remember Her Name, captures Guyton at a watershed moment, living her truth, living it out loud and reaping the emotional catharsis and creative inspiration of making that decision.

Now that she is enjoying her sense of liberation, Guyton has one goal for the album: "I want people to feel loved and accepted and seen when they listen. I know what it's like to feel unseen and I want people that feel that way to hear this and say, 'Man, that's me.'"

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    Mickey Guyton
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    Mickey Guyton - You Don't Know Me At All

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    Mickey Guyton - House On Fire

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    Mickey Guyton - My Side Of The Country

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    Mickey Guyton - Make It Me

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    Mickey Guyton - Scary Love

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    Mickey Guyton - Woman

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    Mickey Guyon feat. Kane Brown - Nothing Compares To You

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    Mickey Guyton

    Remember Her Name

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    Love My Hair

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    Remember Her Name

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    If I Were A Boy

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    Bridges

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    Mickey Guyton

    Mickey Guyton – You Don’t Know Me At All (Official Audio Video)

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    Mickey Guyton and Kane Brown Steal the Show in Official Video for “Nothing Compares To You”
    September 7, 2023

    Mickey Guyton and Kane Brown Steal the Show in Official Video for “Nothing Compares To You”

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (September 7, 2023) – Country star Mickey Guyton releases the official video for her new song “Nothing Compares To You” featuring multi-platinum-selling artist Kane Brown. Directed by Alex Alvga, the video shows the camaraderie between the country stars as they play backup singers who finally get their moment to shine. American Songwriter says the duet, written by Tyler […]

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