In the summer of 2020, some 150 years after the Civil War, country music trio Lady Antebellum realized that a band name that evokes the pre-war days of the American South was inappropriate, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. The band explained that they basically just thought that “antebellum” was a cool word, having apparently never looked it up, but then they went and changed their name to Lady A without looking that up either. As it turned out, Lady A has been the stage name used by a Black singer named Anita White for decades, and she was understandably taken aback by the fact that a group of white people had just taken her name.
Then, in a bizarre turn, the band formerly known as Lady Antebellum announced that they had spoken with Lady A and that everyone had agreed to share the name… until Lady A herself came forward to say that no such agreement had happened. Then, in an even more bizarre turn that put the former Lady Antebellum members in contention for Biggest Assholes Of All Time, the trio sued Lady A so they could keep using her name.
Speaking with The A.V. Club last year, Lady A—who released a song about all of this called “My Name Is All I Got”—said that she’s “being erased from social media” as the band takes control of the name and that it’s harder to find her work on iTunes and Spotify. She countersued the band, but that was as far as thing had gone (at least publicly) until now.
As of this week, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Lady A and the band have agreed to settle their lawsuits. The details aren’t public, though, so we don’t know yet what this means for either side. We imagine it’ll be obvious if one of them starts going by a different name, though. The band did just put out an album last year under the “Lady A” name, so they seem committed to keeping it, but also they’ve pretty clearly been in the wrong this entire time (going back to their original name), so we’ll see.