Texas country queen Mickey Guyton who inspired Beyoncé covered her in transcendent ACL set

It’s not easy to find transcendence when you’re playing a “Today Show” crowd. Broad daylight. Dudes filming and zooming for whole songs. A drummer with shades who is extremely technical—filling every breakdown with a billion fills.

But for country trailblazer, Nashville-made, and Texas-born singer Mickey Guyton, success comes from good music and soaring vocals.

Like on a cover Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy.” Guyton said it was here when she realized that the queen of R&B had a future in country. And when Bey took the genre by storm this year, she sent Guyton a bouquet and thank you card.

“Thank you for opening doors for me, queen,” it read. “Keep shining.”

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“I grew up in Waco, Texas, so this is such a dream for me,” the singer told Austin City Limits Friday afternoon. It’s her first time here.

She sang about her journey to the stage as a Black woman in a white-led genre. On “Better Than You Left,” she told the IHG Hotels and Resorts stage that the song began as a bad breakup kiss-off, but evolved to become about finding herself as the mother of a 3-year-old. A child who she said experienced a near-fatal battle with sepsis as an infant during COVID. She sang about her husband’s trip to the cancer ward and emergency surgery, too.

“House on Fire,” new single, was about cruising through the emotional turbulence of romance. Some jerk yelled a “Free Bird!” request after that one. She covered Tina Turner instead.

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Guyton’s music inspired rampant singalongs because of its duality—big enough for the Target home goods aisle, deeply relatable.

“Pretty Little Mustangs” tapped into her fondness for nightlife when you’re in your 20s and “feral.” She talked about the difficulties of writing drinking songs—noting that tequila and whiskey were well-covered spirits in her genre. Particularly fellow ACL Friday performer Chris Stapleton (“Tennessee Whiskey.”)

“Beer does not do well with my stomach,” she deadpanned.

So she wrote a song about modern brunches in the city with neon signs.

“How did nobody write ‘Rosé All Day?’” she zinged prior to “Rosé.”

Guyton was so optimistic and groovy that she even attracted a white guy in a Rasta hat with holes in his shirt — the very festival hippy long-assumed to have been priced out of ACL.

She even squeezed in an encore of “All American” after requisite “Mickey!” chants. Obviously it was happening, but when you’re a rebel you bend the rules of canned stage decorum all dang day.

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas country queen Mickey Guyton who inspired Beyoncé covered her in transcendent ACL set