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“After much personal reflection, band discussion, prayer and many honest conversations with some of our closest Black friends and colleagues, we have decided to drop the word ‘antebellum’ from our name and move forward as Lady A, the nickname our fans gave us almost from the start,” the band’s social media announcement read.
Not long after, White, who is Black and based in Seattle, talked to Rolling Stone about the band co-opting her professional name.
“This is my life. Lady A is my brand, I’ve used it for over 20 years, and I’m proud of what I’ve done,” she told the publication. “This is too much right now. They’re using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it.”
White accused the band of using the current cultural moment as an “opportunity” to “pretend they’re not racist or pretend this means something to them.”
“If it did, they would’ve done some research. And I’m not happy about that. You found me on Spotify easily — why couldn’t they?” she said.
Despite this dissonant chord, the band and the singer eventually discussed their differences over Zoom alongside fellow blues singer Dexter Allen and gospel singer John Oliver III.
It’s unclear what “positive solutions and common ground” were discussed on the call, but White did reshare a suggestion that she and the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum collaborate on a song, like Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus did on their “Old Town Road” remix.
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