Mickey Guyton Shares Powerful New Song ‘Black Like Me’

Mickey Guyton is sharing a powerful message with her new song, “Black Like Me,” which is all about Guyton’s experience growing up as a black woman in America. She first shared snippets of the song on social media before releasing the studio version at midnight on Blackout Tuesday, which was started by two black women in the music industry as a moment to amplify black voices and continue the conversation around racism in America. “It’s a hard life on easy street/just white painted picket fences far as you can see,” Guyton sings. “If you think we live in the land of the free/you should try to be black like me.”

Guyton wrote “Black Like Me” with with co-producer Nathan Chapman, Emma Davidson-Dillon, and Fraser Churchill over one year ago because she was “tired of seeing so much hate and oppression,” she wrote on Instagram. “And yet here we are in the exact same place! We must change that. I hope this song can give you a small glimpse into what my brothers and sisters have endured for 400+ years” The 36-year-old added on Twitter that the song was a “God moment.” “He put it on my heart to write it,” she shared. “I thought it was to heal my heart but now I realize it’s meant to heal every heart.”

The Texas native has been active with the Black Lives Matter movement for years and is continuing to share and educate her fans amid the current protests in the United States. On Tuesday, she shared a message to her fellow country music artists, writing, “To every country artist not speaking up, now is your chance. We see you and need you to use your platform to be a part of the change.”

Guyton has released a number of singles throughout her career but has not yet released her debut album, a delay due to a difference in opinion between Guyton and her record label, Capitol Nashville. “They were trying to protect me because the world was different then than it is right now. But it ended up messing with my artistry because I was trying to fit into this mold I thought that they wanted,” she told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year. Eventually, Guyton realized that she wanted to start singing about what makes her unique and shared that she “literally just started speaking my truth,” adding: “My whole frame of thinking went from me just singing about my relationships to then just singing about being a black woman in country music. And then being a woman in country music. I want to fight for all of us.”