Mickey Guyton’s nearly had a pop career instead of country. According to some Instagram research, the singer was part of the mega group 3LW during its early days. Her former bandmate, Adrienne Houghton, revealed the fun fact during her run as a co-host on the now-canceled FOX daytime talk show, The Real, while discussing the 2021 Grammy nominees.
“When I got my first record deal, when Tommy Mottola signed me to Epic, the original members of my group actually had a girl named Mickey Guyton in it – she was the original member of 3LW, and she is now this incredible country artist that just got nominated as well. Saw this woman in tears – Mickey Guyton, amazing – she’s actually the original member of 3LW! Fun fact, everybody! She’s the one that got the record deal with us,” Houghton said during the episode. As many know, Guyton made history as the first Black solo artist to earn a Grammy nomination in the country music category.
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Guyton wasn’t the only original member. Apparently, Alicia Keys, and Queen Sugar star Bianca Lawson, had their shot too. “My mom and my aunt had been trying to do a girl group with girls of color for years,” Kiely Williams explained during an interview with Soul Train. “The first iteration of little women, not 3LW, had my older sister Victoria, Alicia Keys, Bianca Lawson in the early 90s. So it had been going on and they’d been trying to get this group together for so many years because they were so passionate about it and they really thought there was not just a window in the market, but also a need for it.”
It wasn’t the first time the public had heard about Keys getting a start in a girl group as she’d previously mentioned it in an interview herself. Pop Crush reports of Keys speaking of her past experiences with girl groups. “My first band that I was in was just four of my homegirls from my neighborhood. I don’t even think we got to the place where we had a name,” she said. “My second band that I was in was kind of like one of these projects that are put together by people, and they heard I sang and they were like ‘oh, maybe you could be a part of it.’ It didn’t work out with me, but eventually, they came out. I think their name was Little Women, but I was never part of that. I moved on and they moved on, that didn’t work out for me.”
