WXPN Welcomes & CMT On Tour Presents: Mickey Guyton

Capitol Nashville’s Mickey Guyton “raises the rafters and distills emotion with impeccable clarity. Her high notes thrill, her nuance in storytelling captivates. A star for our times claims her place” (NPR). The four-time GRAMMY nominee and 2022 TIME Breakthrough Artist of the Year Guyton released songs “I Still Pray,” “How You Love Someone” and “Somethin’ Bout You” following her critically acclaimed 2021 debut album, Remember Her Name. Most recently, she unveiled her latest singles “Scary Love” and “Woman” to maintain her momentum in 2024.

With Remember Her Name, Mickey made history as the first Black artist to earn a GRAMMY nomination for Best Country Album. Title track “Remember Her Name” also landed Mickey with GRAMMY nominations for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance. This follows Mickey’s groundbreaking GRAMMY nomination as the first-ever Black female solo artist to earn a nod in a country category (Best Country Solo Performance) for “Black Like Me” which she performed as part of the 2021 awards ceremony. “Black Like Me” was named one of the Top 10 all-genre songs of 2020 by NPR, Billboard, and Associated Press. She also co-hosted the 56th Academy of Country Music Awards on CBS along with Keith Urban and she was named CMT’s 2021 Breakout Artist of the Year. Audiences around the world watched Mickey deliver a powerful message of inclusivity and togetherness with her “awe-inspiring,” “soulful and soaring” national anthem at Super Bowl 56 in Los Angeles.

Mickey and her music have been featured on the cover of Billboard and profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times and Rolling Stone. Over the last year she has been featured in American Songwriter, BBC News, CBS Mornings, Ebony, Elle, Ellen, Entertainment Weekly, Essence, HITS, Sesame Street, SHERRI, The Jennifer Hudson Show, The Kelly Clarkson Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine’s Vulture, PEOPLE, Pollstar, Sesame Street, TODAY Show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, USA Today, Variety, VIBE, The View, Vogue, The Washington Post and many more.

Denitia grew up in small refinery towns outside Houston, performing in school choir and learning to play piano, then saxophone and trumpet, then guitar. Inspired by the country legends she listened to as a child; the harmony, gusto, and intention of praise and worship music; and the raw edge and passion of alternative rock, she made her way to Nashville for college, then to Brooklyn for a decade. But she found her way home — to country music, her gold standard for songwriting, and back to Nashville — with her 2022 album, Highways, an “alt-country ramble” through emotion, time, and place that is “deeply tuneful, light on its feet, and shot through with melancholy” (Stereogum). The turn suited her. Denitia was named an Artist to Watch by NPR after earning one of five spots in the Black Opry and WXPN’s 2023 residency, was a member of Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country Class of 2023, was one of three artists in CMT and mtheory’s 2023 Equal Access cohort, was a 2023 AmericanaFest Showcasing Artist, and recently was named a 2024 CMT Next Woman of Country, and a 2024 Artist to Watch by the Nashville Scene. CMT also premiered Denitia’s powerful “I Want To Live” music video on their Times Square billboard in August of 2023. If Highways was a homecoming, Denitia’s forthcoming new album, Sunset Drive, anchors her there. “I wanted to make a collection of songs that felt like a louder evolution of the tenderness of Highways,” Denitia explains. “This project weaves together heartache, romance, and wanderlust to tell the bittersweet story of what it means to stay on the road of life: the visions ahead, the life you leave behind, and everything you take with you.” Denitia has also toured extensively with the Black Opry Revue; been invited to perform at the National Museum of African American Music and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville; and shared stages with Jason Isbell, Amythyst Kiah, Wendy Moten, and Joy Oladokun, among other artists. Her music has been featured in the 2022 films Nanny and The Invitation, as well as in the series Better Things (FX), Broad City (Comedy Central), Dear White People (Netflix), Shrinking (Apple TV+), and The Terminal List (Amazon).