Margo Price shared her unfiltered thoughts on the legal name dispute between the band Lady A, formerly known as Lady Antebellum, and the blues singer Anita “Lady A” White,” after the first camp filed a lawsuit over the matter.
“sooooo they changed their name but does the ‘A’ stand for antebellum or a–hole,” Price wrote on Twitter Wednesday (July 8) when the news of the suit first broke. Questlove also commented on the issue, tweeting on Wednesday, “lol so Lady Antebellum changed their name because of black lives…. and then sued singer @ladiawhite who has been known as #LadyA for the longest? uh…….”
Earlier last month, the country trio consisting of Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and David Haywood announced on Instagram that they were ditching their famed stage name from 2006, which dates back to the pre-Civil War South heavily fueled by slavery, in light of the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement. But White spoke out the next day in an interview with Rolling Stone saying she felt blindsided by the name change since she’s been performing and recording under the “Lady A” title since 1987.
As both acts seemed to be coming to amicable terms about continuing under the same name during their virtual meetings, Billboard reported earlier this week that the band filed a lawsuit in Nashville after the Seattle-based solo act “delivered a draft settlement agreement that included an exorbitant monetary demand” equalling $10 million, according to the concurrently issued statement.
Although the band stated in the suit that it wishes to share the name rather than stop White from using it, the singer spoke out in an interview with Vulture yesterday (July 9) where she declared, “I am not going to be erased.” She stood her ground against the superstar trio as a Black, independent artist and expressed what she believes as the proper, non-performative allyship to exercise while calling out anti-Black racism that the Grammy award-winning band committed itself to in its initial name change announcement.
“But here we go again with another white person trying to take something from a Black person, even though they say they’re trying to help. If you want to be an advocate or an ally, you help those who you’re oppressing,” White told Vulture. “And that might require you to give up something because I am not going to be erased.”
See the stars’ reactions to the band’s lawsuit below.
