Mickey Guyton’s never been afraid to share her emotions in her music — and those closest to her trust her to sing the truth.
The country star’s new album, House on Fire, features several love songs about her husband, Grant Savoy. According to Guyton, her partner of 14 years likes being the subject of her lyrics.
“He loves that I write songs about him. He absolutely loves it,” Guyton, 41, exclusively told Us Weekly after House on Fire’s debut. “Everything is about him, really.”
Some spouses might be worried that listeners are getting just one side of the story, but Guyton said that’s not the case with Savoy, whom she wed in 2017. “I’ve tried to be pretty accurate,” she quipped. “I’m pretty accurate with our fights. If it’s my fault, I’ll say it’s my fault.”
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And if Savoy disagrees with her take in song? “He has no veto power,” Guyton said with a laugh.
According to the Grammy nominee, Savoy, who’s a lawyer, is actually one of the reasons she decided to share more about her personal life in her music.
“He’s the one that taught me to be open,” she explained to Us. “I was not as open. He lives his life very openly, [with] everything. He’s such a free spirit, and that’s something that I didn’t ever experience growing up. I was more reserved, and he taught me to like, ‘Live your truth, girl. You be you.’”
Guyton’s album also includes “Scary Love,” which is a love letter to her and Savoy’s 3-year-old son, Grayson. (The toddler also makes a cameo on the track “Grayson’s Interlude.”)
Guyton and Savoy experienced a terrifying ordeal in 2021 when Grayson was less than a year old. At the time, the child became extremely dehydrated and was taken to the ER, where he was diagnosed with sepsis. Grayson is happy and healthy now, but the situation was understandably terrifying for Guyton, who recounts her feelings in “Scary Love.”
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“Drivin’ to the store ain’t just driving to the store anymore / Don’t wanna imagine ’cause anything could happen,” she sings. “I still can’t believe just how often my knees hit the floor / God, I feel helpless, but I can’t really help it.”
Welcoming Grayson has changed the way Guyton sees her entire career, she told Us, especially after his health scare. “Being a first-time mom has changed everything for me,” she explained. “Like, everything — the way I operate, the way I move. My son almost dying … that right there just changes you forever, and I haven’t really been the same since. And so definitely I approach things differently.”
Grayson, meanwhile, is getting old enough to understand what his mom does for a living — and he’s a fan. At a show this past summer, he was in the audience while Guyton was soundchecking and made sure everyone knew who his mom was.
“He goes, ‘That’s my mom!’” Guyton recalled. “I was just like, ‘This right here is why we do it.’ He understands now, and it’s really, really cool. You only wanna make your kid proud. That’s really what it’s all about.”
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While Grayson’s favorite song on House on Fire is “Make It Me,” Guyton herself is partial to “My Side of the Country,” the latter of which she cowrote with Corey Crowder and Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard. The singer explained that she wanted the track to send the message that country music doesn’t look or sound just one way.
“There’s so many different versions of country music,” Guyton said. “There’s basically a country renaissance happening, someone called it. We were just writing our [version of] like, ‘Hey, California country is a thing too.’ We wear cowboy boots, we do all the same things.”
Guyton has often found herself at the center of debates about who gets to claim the “country” label, but she’s feeling mostly positive about the genre’s recent strides forward.
“I think the future is bright. … I hope this excitement stays,” she told Us. “We still have a long way to go. Country music charts are still very heavily male, very heavily male, and the data is there. It’s not me talking s— about country music. It is what it is, so we have a long way to go, but I hope [this momentum] stays. … We just have to keep making space and using our platforms to help other artists.”
House on Fire is out now.