‘Honest conversations’ lead to name change for Lady A
Lady Antebellum, the Grammy-winning country music trio behind one of the highest-selling country songs of all time, is dropping the “antebellum.”
Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood released a statement on social media Thursday and said while the band’s name originated from the Southern “antebellum”-style homes where they took some of their first photos as a band, they are now “regretful and embarrassed to say that we did not take into account the associations to the period of history before the Civil War, which includes slavery.”
With the national reckoning over the Black Lives Matter movement, the group reconsidered the implications behind the phrase.
“We’ve watched and listened more than ever these last few weeks, and our hearts have been stirred with conviction, our eyes opened wide to the injustices, inequality and biases Black women and men have always faced and continued to face every day. Now, blind spots we didn’t even know existed have been revealed,” they wrote. “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.”
“We understand that many of you may ask the question ‘Why have you not made this change until now?’ The answer is that we can make no excuse for our lateness to this realization. What we can do is acknowledge it, turn from it and take action.”
The group has been called out many times in the past for a name associated with the Antebellum South, the period of time before the Civil War when Black people were enslaved. They said in their statement that when they came up with the name, “As musicians, it reminded us of all the music born in the south that influenced us ... Southern rock, blues, R&B, gospel and of course country ... We are deeply sorry for the hurt this has caused and for anyone who has felt unsafe, unseen or unvalued.”