A fresh start.
The 2020 iHeartCountry Festival is tonight, but before superstar acts like Lady A take the virtual stage, E!’s Carissa Culiner caught up with the band to discuss their plans for the show, and more importantly, why they decided to change their name.
The trio that makes up the band—Hillary Scott, Charles Kelly and Dave Haywood—made the announcement that they’d be going from “Lady Antebellum” to “Lady A” in an open letter to fans on June 11.
Though the country singers noted that “Lady A” was a nickname fans had given them “almost from the start,” they also apologized for not previously considering the “associations that weigh down this word referencing the period of history before the Civil War, which includes slavery.”
The bandmates reflected on their decision on Friday, Oct. 23’s Daily Pop, with Hillary telling Carissa, “I think we’ve become much more aware of just the world around us and what’s going on.”
At the time, people across the U.S. were protesting the murder of George Floyd, shining a renewed spotlight on racism, police brutality and social injustice.
