For some reason, a lot of times, even within country music, they're like, 'We want something
light and fluffy and and get people's mind off of what's going on. But what happens when your world
isn't so light and fluffy?
What are you gonna tell her? When she figures out that all this time you
built her up just so the world could let her down. Yeah what do you tell her?
I didn't even know that I had made history that night.
I had no idea. I walked in there and I was just-- I was worried about singing with Keith
Urban, was my main you know fear. And then once I stepped off the stage is was when I saw what had
happened. And it's honestly it's such a blessing. It's such a a surreal moment. Because you wait for
these moments your whole life, and you never think you're going to be setting a record or
making history. That was never my goal. I just loved country music and I wanted to sing it.
If you think we live in the land of the free you should try to be Black like me.
I was the timid country artist that didn't want to rock the boat, that didn't want to say anything to
offend anybody. And here I'm seeing people younger than me that are like, 'I don't care.
I'm gonna say how I feel.' And that has inspired me. About two years ago, I really started writing
my truth. I had a conversation with my husband, and I asked him why country music wasn't working
for me. And he said because I was running away from everything that makes me different.
So I really started writing my own truth. And there was a book that I had read in college
called 'Black Like Me.' And that book always stuck with me because it was truly someone stepping
into somebody else's shoes, in every meaning of the word. And so I was inspired by that title,
and I was just going off of my own experiences of being a Black person in America.
We never thought it was gonna see the light of day. Everybody that heard it was like,
'Wow, this is powerful. I need to sit with it for a minute.' You know I knew it was a
polarizing song, so I thought it was just going to be something that I had with me forever,
and nobody else would get a chance to hear it. But it wasn't until the deaths of Breonna Taylor
and Ahmad Arbery and George Floyd did the opportunity to release it presented itself.
I just put it on my social media, hoping that it could give listeners comfort
in these times. It was mortifying to see a man die for eight minutes. That was horrible.
I was seeing the protests right outside of my door. And people of all races standing together,
marching for the cause for Black lives, for humanity. And watching that inspired me to
write all of this music that I've been writing. There are activists out there
on the front lines that are not getting any of the attention that they truly, truly deserve.
I just wrote some songs that, from my own personal dealings with racism, so I can't say that I'm this
model activist. I'm not. I just wrote songs because people were telling me to shut
up and sing. So I was writing songs about what I've seen, and what I've been seeing.
Just trying to get people and give people hope in these hard times.