“Nice Things”
Mickey Guyton
Written by Stephanie Chapman, Mickey Guyton, and Liz Rose
2017
There’s a rampant and toxic anti-intellectualism within the greater country music discourse, which argues that it’s an art form that should not be the subject of serious criticism or academic analysis. It’s a form of gatekeeping of who is allowed to value country music, to respond to it on a deep, personal level, and to express authoritative opinions about its virtues.
It’s the same exact gatekeeping that tries to dictate who is allowed to make country music and whose country music gets supported by the larger industry. It’s rooted in a belief that country music has only ever been “pure” when it takes one particular form and is made by a very limited subset of the population, and it’s all just willful ignorance and bigotry writ large. It ignores the genre’s actual history of including, rather than vilifying as “elites,” the perspectives of artists like Rhodes Scholar Kris Kristofferson, Ivy League alumna Mary Chapin Carpenter, or MacArthur Fellows Rhiannon Giddens and Chris Thile.
The best country single of the 1990s name-checked William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams as gave the country music audience credit for knowing those references and what they meant. That kind of songwriting became increasingly rare over the last twenty years, and it was an artist who was gatekept out of much of the genre’s mainstream who was responsible for the most powerful literary allusion in recent memory.
There’s always some reason to try to explain away Mickey Guyton’s lack of traction at radio or within the country industry. Her music isn’t “country.” Her management team didn’t jump through every last hoop required to get a single added by radio PDs. She didn’t show up for the country “family” events. Her songs aren’t good enough. Why, it’s almost like it’s all designed such that a talented woman of color could never find an open door.
“‘Nice Things,” Guyton’s finest moment on record, lays bare all of these institutional barriers. The primary instruments are a gently-plucked acoustic guitar and a dobro. Guyton swallows her vowels like she’s channelling Melba Montgomery and hits high notes without breaking a sweat. The song’s hook hinges on some wisdom from Mama. And the narrative turns on an apt, purposeful allusion to a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem, which, in turn, inspired the title of Maya Angelou’s autobiography.
It’s a beautiful song on which an abused and neglected woman comes to recognize her own worth, and it’s set to an arrangement that emphasizes both the “pop” and the “country” halves of pop-country in the best ways. But, more than anything else, “Nice Things” is a throwback to an era when the genre recognized that country audiences– country people– are smart.
It turns out that, as country music fans, we can still have nice things. It’s just that we have to look beyond country radio to find most of them.
Additional Listening:
- “What Are You Gonna Tell Her,” Guyton’s soaring ballad about raising a daughter in a world that shows contempt for the autonomy of women.
- “Black Like Me,” Guyton’s bald-faced challenge to country audiences to consider that the experiences of a black woman might actually be different from those of other Americans.
- Pam Tillis’ immortal “Maybe It Was Memphis,” in which she sings of reading a whole damn book. Imagine!
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Yes, yes and again, yes.
And here I thought I was the only one who remembered this random single from coming up on a decade ago. Definitely a welcome surprise to see it featured here.
I appreciate this particular comment so very much as someone who’s often felt like I’m the only person– give or take Kevin, whose memory works in much the same way– who remembers specific songs. In this case, “Nice Things” has stayed in heavy rotation on my iPod and Spotify playlists, and I’ve often wondered how many others could say the same!
I remember this song getting played maybe two or three times on the radio here in L.A. back in 2017…and then it just vanished. It’s not that I am “woke” or “DEI” (and to be very blunt, I don’t think the people who constantly use those terms in the derisive ways they use them even know what the hell they’re talking about to begin with), but in my opinion, Mickey hit a good spot with this song; and it’s a big black blot on country radio that both she and the song got the royal screw job from them.
It should be noted, however, that Mickey had one of the great moments that any performer could have when she performed the National Anthem live in front of 80,000+ at Inglewood’s Sofi Stadium before the start of Super Bowl 56, and scored a proverbial touchdown. Watch this space, folks.
I really like Mickey but I find the career interesting and not sure what to make of it. I have been listening to country since I was young in the 70’s and have never seen the industry push harder to make someone a star than they have for Mickey. She has received many gigs that someone with her “lack of success” would never receive so I don’t think you could blame the industry at all for her lack of radio success. She is a great singer but sometimes (actually for most singers in the world) you just don’t make it. I do wish her the best. She is still young enough so she could still come out with a breakthrough hit.