Black Like Me

According to The Guardian yesterday, Mickey Guyton

is the first Black solo female artist to be nominated in a Grammy country category, for her single Black Like Me; the only previous Black women to be nominated for country music were the Pointer Sisters in 1976. She says she never pictured making history with a song that details the Black experience in an exclusionary genre, or that she would pivot from trying to keep quiet and compliant to being at the forefront of a movement to crack country open to new voices. But now, she says, “the boat has been rocked”. As Guyton sings on her 2015 release Better Than You Left Me, a track that should have been a hit if American country radio were not so committed to moderately talented white men as its bread and butter, “it’s funny what a little time does, baby”.

The song doesn’t have an expensive video. It does have a very good live-in-the-studio clip though.

I no longer know what exactly constitutes a “country song”, if indeed anything does. Maybe having a steel guitar helps.