3 Songs on Mickey Guyton's New Bridges EP

To say that Mickey Guyton’s “Bridges” EP has been a long time coming is an understatement. A massive understatement.

I’ve been writing with Mickey for 8 years. We’ve poured our hearts out into piles of songs that have never been heard, trying to find Mickey’s sound…her direction…the one single that would set her apart and break her through the closed door of country radio. (Which, you may have noticed, is a locked door to all but a handful of women who comprise the carefully curated less than 10% female content on their playlists across the USA.)

We began to feel frustrated, defeated, and beaten. We began to feel like no matter how hard we tried, we couldn't give the label or the radio programmers what they wanted to hear. We got angry. We both got to the brink of giving up, leaving Nashville and walking away from the business entirely. And THEN we wrote the songs that became this EP.

“Rosé” was the first. It was a thinly veiled protest song hiding in the disguise of a happy-go-lucky drinking song. “Everybody’s singing ‘bout whiskey, everybody’s talking ‘bout tequila, moonshine drippin’ in the moonlight, lips tasting like sangria…” but me, I’m rosé. Rosé all damn day. A woman in a man’s world.

“What Are You Gonna Tell Her” followed, which became the breakthrough performance that earned Mickey a standing ovation in the packed Ryman Auditorium during Country Radio Seminar week from the exact same radio programmers that were not playing her music. It was a bitter and sweet moment. The song was still never played on most country stations, but it didn’t matter. It needed to be said.

Finally, we wrote “Bridges” in the middle of the pandemic lockdown, via Zoom, with co-writers Karen Kosowski and Emma-Lee. Out in the streets there were protests, tear gas and rubber bullets in response to the death of George Floyd. In my tornado-torn house, my kids were melting down while hammers pounded on the tarped and broken roof overhead. But the song poured out of us that day, and Karen built the track and then remote-controlled the laptop in Mickey's L.A. apartment to engineer the vocal from Nashville. The pandemic prevented us from having a choir, so Mickey sang every background part, changing her vocal tone with each track to bring it alive and make it sound like 100 different people.

So “Bridges” has been a long time coming. But it HAD to be a long time coming. That’s what made these songs what they are. I’m really glad to see Mickey’s star finally taking off with its release, because her voice is a beautiful, mighty, and important representation of everything that is missing in the country music industry right now. And I’m grateful to have hung in there long enough to be part of this journey with her. We spoke our truth, and finally, people are listening.

CLICK HERE to check out Mickey Guyton’s EP Bridges on iTunes.

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