You may have seen the news; Lady Antebellum is officially changing their name to ‘Lady A’, due to the word Antebellum having some “Old South” connotations that the band members would rather distance themselves from. There’s a tiny little problem with that, though: The name Lady A has been in use by a blues musician for more than 20 years.
That’s right, the ORIGINAL Lady A is none other than Anita White, a 61 year old woman who has released multiple albums under her Lady A stage name, and plans to release another on July 18th. What’s really ironic, in Ms. White’s own words: “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. 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.”
I say, good for Anita White for standing up for this. It’s just my two cents, but maybe if Lady Antebellum had done their research, they would have picked something a little bit more original.
Link to the Rolling Stone article here.
