When the platinum-selling, Grammy-winning country group known as Lady Antebellum announced they would no longer use a name that evoked nostalgia for a slavery-era south, most people recognized that it was the right thing to do. (Indeed, the band itself has been some queasy about the name since 2010.) Their rebranding as Lady A, however, did trouble one woman in particular, the Seattle-based blues singer Lady A.
The two parties have been in conversation for weeks over the matter, but it looks as though they may end up in court. The country colossus has filed a lawsuit which does not ask for monetary damages, but for a declaration that the band is not infringing on the singer’s rights and that the two can co-exist.
At issue is that fact that the band did, in fact, register a trademark on the “Lady A” name in 2010, and that the singer requested $10 million from the band, which she said she would split between herself and a collection charities including Black Lives Matter and for musicians needing legal counsel. The band called the demands “exorbitant.”
Lady A spoke with Rolling Stone on Friday and did not hold back.
“At this point, I’m not surprised by anything they would do,” she said of finding herself on the receiving end of a lawsuit from a mega-successful group.
Among Lady A’s primary complaints is how the band’s sudden rebranding has effectively buried her work on streaming platforms like Spotify. “[M]y name was under theirs; I could find myself easily, no problem. Now you can’t find me anywhere,” she said, adding that the group’s “best efforts at coexistence” are “hollow; they didn’t mean what they said. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been erased.”
The singer added that the band’s move to rebrand “follows the trend of many other groups and organizations working to distance themselves from racist undertones in the wake of the uprisings in this post-George Floyd world,” but “to do so by taking the name on which I, a black woman, have built my career in the music industry for over 20 years is ironic.”
“They claim to be allies and that they wanted to change their name out of the racist connotation, and then they sue a black woman for the new name,” she said.