Aside from being her star-making year, 2021 also saw Mickey Guyton finally achieve unprecedented levels of personal peace and joy from her career. In her debut album “Remember Her Name,” which includes profoundly personal tracks like “Love My Hair,” she completed the deeper work of holistic calm that highly personalized songwriting so frequently offers country stars.
Upon being shown a video of her recent CMA Awards performance, of her album track “Love My Hair” alongside Brittney Spencer and Madeline Edwards during a recent ABC appearance, she stated, “That moment was just so beautiful. I felt such love at that moment for these two women.”
The song bittersweetly melds the trauma felt by Guyton with the story of Louisiana-based elementary school student Faith Fennidy, who was publicly humiliated by her teacher for wearing box braid hair extensions — an unknown (and antiquated) violation of the school’s dress code. The song itself — like much of her late September-released album — is a triumph as much for Guyton as an artist finally releasing a mainstream album after being label-signed for over a decade as it is for Guyton as a self-conscious human being.
“I’ve gone through a lot in learning how to accept and love myself,” Guyton noted. “[Related], I [also] have a really hard time talking about my feelings. A lot of times [in learning how to love myself], music was healing for me. I learned to love myself [by putting that emotion] into songs because they put my feelings into words,” she said.