Single review: Mickey Guyton - Black Like Me

A Country song about being Black?! Whew, chile. Some white people gon' be so mad. But let 'em be.

Country music has always been about singing truth, so any objections to Mickey singing about this isn't because 'this isn't country', it's because it's a Black woman doing it.

Singing about your Blackness isn't something that's common in Pop. Less so in Country. It's oft been something that's been reserved for Hip-Hop and Rap throughout the decades, right up to the present day. Even R&B steered cleared of it for the most part as we moved out of the 60s and 70s, where it was far more common for Black artists to sing about their Blackness and be unapologetic in doing so. Aretha Franklin named a whole ass album Young, Gifted and Black after the Nina Simone song. Stevie Wonder threw in a song about Blickitty Blackness in near enough every album he put out in the 70s. But then things changed and race wasn't a topic you got in songs that much outside of Rap and Soul. Few commercial artists touched it. Sure, some did, such as Mariah Carey with "Outside". But you had to be subtle with it as not to kill the commerciality of the song. Throw in enough that those who KNOW, know. But not too much that it can lead to outrage, cries of 'THIS SONG IS ABOUT BEING BLACK, ALL LIVES MATTER!' and the song getting pulled. So the Blackness agenda or the clearer context of the song would be reserved for music videos. Janelle Monae's "Many Moons" is an example of this. Beyoncé's Lemonade was another.

But now here we are in a time where racism and Blackness are global topics that everybody (namely white people) is forced to face and confront with. Subtlety is out of the window, because we've tried that. And this is what makes Mickey's "Black Like Me" hit so differently now.

"Black Like Me" is a powerful song regardless of the time period or the context. But it is certainly weighted by Mickey being one of few Black Country singers around. Country being a genre which has historically been racist and continues to be, although things are certainly changing.

"Black Like Me" centres Mickey as an example of how far Country and the world has come in many instances, but that there is also a lot which hasn't changed at all. And the song is beautifully written to not only speak to Mickey's experience of being Black, but critiquing the very notion of what America claims to stand for, versus what the reality is for Black people. All culminating in a hook which expresses what white privilege is without uttering the words. Try being Black. Try living in a world where your existence breeds such contempt and hatred. Try being a Black woman in a music industry which favours Blackness as long as its not from a Black woman. Then try being a Black Country singer on top of all that.

There's so much that Mickey could be bitter and angry about, and she'd have every fucking right to be. But "Black Like Me" manages to be sincere and warm because of how Mickey delivers the song. It's feels odd to call it beautiful, but it is. Because pain be like that sometimes. And the directness of the lyrics and the song being so cleanly produced and well structured make it stick like glue.

When I first listened to the song I felt that the ending could have been grander. That it could have done with some live strings to really make the song soar. But after repeated listens I realised that the grandiosity would have taken away from not only the simplicity of the song, but also shifted the focus from the subject matter to the production.

I high-key wanna hear Brandy cover this.

RATING: 9 / 10

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