Lady A 'Knew' They Were 'Going to Alienate a Lot of Fans' With Name Change

12/22/2020 01:22 pm EST

Lady A stumbled into an unintended controversy this summer when they announced that they were dropping the word antebellum from their name to become Lady A, a decision the country trio made in an effort to leave behind the racist connotations of their former moniker. Soon after they announced the switch, Anita White, a blues singer from Seattle who had been going by the stage name Lady A for decades, came forward to say that she had not been contacted about the decision, and the two parties are now involved in a lawsuit over the usage of the name.

During an appearance on The Tamron Hall Show last week, the Nashville-based Lady A explained the reasoning behind their decision. "I think the word to me that resonates most this year has been blind-spot," band member Charles Kelley said. "And I think I am so guilty of...I didn't think about it." Kelly noted that he and bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood chose the name Lady Antebellum as a nod to the antebellum-style architecture in the South, a notion he described as "so naive now looking back."

"I mean why now?" he said. "Well, we're a lot older, we look at the world a lot different. You know we're trying to leave the world a little bit better too for our kids and the next generation. And we want to be a part of change. We knew this was going to be difficult. We knew we were going to alienate a lot of fans, you know we didn't see some of these other things coming, but it hasn't changed how we've tried."

Haywood added that the trio made their decision after having "so many conversations" with Black friends. "Our goal was to find out the heart behind what 'Antebellum' could bring up for some, and unanimously, it brought up hardship," he said. "So this decision was simple for us; we've been going by 'Lady A' since 2006. And I was just going through my journal the other day and, man, the common denominator with all of my conversations with my friends of color was, 'Let's please keep having this conversation y'all. Let's keep talking about this. Let's make some long term commitments to this,' which we decided to do with our organization, Lady Aid, to support some HBCUs and underprivileged communities."

Addressing their legal issues with White, Scott said they "never saw that coming" but made the change from a place of inclusivity. "We want our music, and our live shows and anything that we're a part of, for everyone to feel welcome and invited," she explained. "And we realized over the summer not touring and watching just this movement happen that is so needed in this country and around the world, we started to see what our part was, what part of our first steps in making a difference could be. Our name changing was the first step."

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