Meet Country Singer Mickey Guyton

Getty Mickey Guyton is performing the national anthem at the 2022 Super Bowl.

Country singer Mickey Guyton will perform the national anthem at the 2022 Super Bowl game.

Guyton is a 38-year-old Texas native. She released her debut single, “Better Than You Left Me,” in 2015. In 2020, Guyton released the single “Black Like Me” about her experiences as a Black woman. The song earned her a Grammy nomination, making her the first Black woman to be nominated in the country solo performance category.

“Black Like Me” was released in June 2020, about a week after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Guyton told NPR that she had recorded and finished the song about eight months prior but it hadn’t ever felt like the right time to release it with so many people struggling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“And then I saw Ahmaud (Arbery). And then I saw Breonna (Taylor). And then I saw George. I just put ‘Black Like Me’ on my Instagram. No permission, no nothing. I just put it out there because people need to hear that. And then Spotify called and asked for it. I was like, ‘Here. Take it. No, there doesn’t need to be promotion, because that’s tacky,'” she told NPR.

Guyton released her first full-length album, “Remember Her Name,” in September 2021.

Guyton on Patriotism: ‘Anyone Can Wave a Flag’

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Guyton talked about what patriotism means to her as a Black woman who is outspoken about racism in America.

“Anybody can wave a flag, but is that patriotism? I can buy a flag right now on Amazon, so is that patriotism? For me, it’s deeper,” Guyton told the outlet. “I feel like a patriot is loving everybody, a patriot is someone who sees people hurting and wants to do everything in their power to fix it. And patriotism is inclusion.”

Guyton added that she worked with a creative director on her national anthem performance “because there is something very specific I want to come across. Our country has been so divided for so long and it’s been very hard to watch. I’m just trying to unite people.”

A National Anthem Rendition Got Guyton Into Country Music

Guyton told the Los Angeles Times that hearing LeAnn Rimes sing the national anthem when she was a little girl is what got her interested in country music in the first place. But it was Whitney Houston’s legendary performance of the song that showed her what Black women were capable of achieving in the music industry.

“I feel like she (Whitney Houston) evoked the truest meaning of America when she sang it. I felt so proud to be an American after that. I was like, ‘Yes! America!’ That’s what I want, to feel that again. I want everyone to feel that again,” Guyton said.

“I want to be able to proudly wave my American flag and sometimes it’s really difficult to do, watching what’s going on in this country. That doesn’t mean I don’t love it here, it just means we have a lot of work to do,” Guyton told the outlet.