The title track of Mickey Guyton’s 2020 EP Bridges is meant to unify. “Bridges,” the song, talks of building bridges — metaphorically speaking — from one person to another, no matter the chasms of differences between us.
“What if we took these stones we’ve been throwin’? / What if we laid ’em down? / What if we forget all that we know and / Make some common ground,” Guyton sings in the chorus. “What if I reach for you, you reach for me, close the distance? / What if that space between changed, if we started building / Bridges, bridges, bridges.”
Guyton co-wrote “Bridges” with Karen Kosowski, Victoria Banks and Emma-Lee. Below, she shares the story behind the song.
Being stuck inside for six months, there’s been a lot of tears shed over all of this, and the songs “Bridges” and “Heaven Down Here” were kind of the songs that lifted me up out of that sadness …
Honestly, when I wrote “Bridges,” that was the song that connects everything, because at the end of the day, the reason why I’m here is, I’m fighting for equality and love. That’s literally all I want, is equality and love, and that song “Bridges” is that.
It’s like, when you think of bridges: What do bridges do? It connects land, it connects people … and so, that’s where that song came from, and that’s kind of the hope that I was feeling, because, I live in downtown Los Angeles, and I was seeing a lot of the protests that were happening [following the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis] — that were so peaceful, by the way … and [featured] people coming together and standing together, and all races out there loving each other and wanting equality. That’s what I saw …