Coutry star Mickey Guyton's song "Black Like Me" appeared, without promotional fanfare, on her Instagram account and Spotify's marquee Hot Country playlist. The track encapsulates her vision on many levels. It builds like a pop anthem, piano chords supplying a pensive pulse until the hook lifts above handclap backbeats, shadings of subterranean bass and ribbons of steel guitar. Vocally, she moves through country, pop and gospel modes: intimate narration, commanding plea and, at the song's emotional climax, imperial belting, agile, octave leaps and flaring, improvisational runs. In the lyrics, she applies familiar tools of country storytelling — a small-town backdrop; poignantly down-to-earth scenes of class disparity; admiration for a parent's hard work — to aim her anguish at dehumanizing encounters with racism toward sparking broad empathy.
