The battle between Lady A the band and Lady A the singer rages on.
“Here we go again with another white person trying to take something from a black person,” Anita White, the Seattle blues singer who has performed as Lady A for 20 years, told Vulture.
“If you want to be an advocate or an ally, you help those who you're oppressing. And that might require you to give up something, because I am not going to be erased.”
White is responding to a lawsuit filed against her this week by the country trio Lady A, which is seeking a ruling that they can use the name they trademarked in 2011. The group has not sought to prevent White from using the nickname Lady A and is not seeking any money.
“We never even entertained the idea that she shouldn’t also be able to use the name Lady A, and never will – today’s action doesn’t change that,” the band said, in a statement.
Lady Antebellum rebranded as Lady A in June because “antebellum” evokes a period in U.S. history when slavery was common. Shortly after the announcement, Lady A said it had a Zoom meeting with White and looked forward to “moving forward with positive solutions and common ground.”
White said Lady A proposed an agreement that both acts would coexist "and that they would use their best efforts to assist me on social media platforms, Amazon, iTunes, all that.
“But what does that mean? I had suggested on the Zoom call that they go by the Band Lady A, or Lady A the Band, and I could be Lady A the Artist, but they didn't want to do that.”
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Nashville’s U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, stated that following the meeting, White’s lawyers made “an exorbitant monetary demand” of $10 million U.S.
White confirmed to Vulture that she asked for the cash but planned to use half of it to support organizations that assist Black artists.
“I was quiet for two weeks because I was trying to believe that it was going to be okay and that they would realize that it would be easier to just change their name, or pay me for my name,” said White, who believes Lady A was never willing to compromise.
“They always knew what they were gonna do.”