Mickey Guyton

Candace Mycale “Mickey” Guyton was born on June 17, 1983, in Arlington, Texas. Her childhood involved frequent moves due to her father’s engineering career, leading to early experiences with racial discrimination that shaped her perspective. Guyton discovered her passion for singing at age five, performing in church choirs, including Mount Olive Baptist Church in Arlington. A pivotal moment in her early life was witnessing LeAnn Rimes perform “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which inspired her to pursue a career in music. After high school, she moved to Los Angeles, California, attending Santa Monica College and working various jobs, including background vocalist roles, and even auditioning for the seventh season of American Idol, where her journey ended just before the live shows for the top 24.

Guyton’s professional music career began to take shape after meeting record producer Julian Raymond in Los Angeles, who connected her with industry professionals Gary Borman and Steve Moir. This led her to move to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2011, where she joined the city’s songwriting community. In the same year, she signed with Capitol Records Nashville after an audition for UMG Nashville’s chairman, Mike Dungan, where she sang a Patty Loveless song. Her signing marked her as the only Black female artist on a major country label at the time. A notable early performance included an all-star concert at the White House, where she shared the stage with artists such as Kris Kristofferson and Darius Rucker.

Despite industry pressures to conform to traditional country music standards, Guyton released her debut acoustic EP, “Unbreakable,” in 2014, which reached number 14 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. Her debut single, “Better Than You Left Me,” released in 2015, achieved a peak position of number 34 on the US Country Airplay chart and a similar peak on Canada’s Billboard country chart. The track garnered attention for Guyton as a Black woman in a predominantly white, male-dominated genre. Her self-titled second EP, released in May 2015, reached number 17 on the Billboard Heatseekers list. In 2020, her career gained significant momentum with the release of “Black Like Me,” a song addressing her experiences with racial discrimination in country music. This song earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Country Solo Performance, making her the first Black woman to be nominated in that category. That same year, she also became the first Black female artist to perform at the Academy of Country Music awards.