Seth Power: Advocating for Mississippi and Celebrating Milestones in Life and Music by Nate Schumann
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October 14 - 27, 2020 • jfp.ms
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Launching a Career Based on Convictions While Power feels blessed by the feats he has been able to accomplish as a musician thus far, he remembers a time during his early days as a recording artist when choosing to write a song about a controversial issue led some people to believe he had sabotaged his own career. Shortly after graduating from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s degree in business in 2015, Power began working with a number of people who were deeply affected by the underlying symbolism surrounding the former Mississippi state flag that bore Confederate imagery, and who were passionate about their positions that it needed replaced. “As a whole, it was not a subject I had put much thought into, but when I was sitting down and talking to these people who
S“#ChangeMissFlag” T-shirts shortly followed. The song’s opening invokes imagery surrounding the systemic violence perpetrated by law enforcement against Black Americans across the nation, but “Free” also contains the message that people hold the power to take action in the present to change the future for the better. “I can picture the blood of my brother on the pavement. The world is crying out for you, and I am gonna save it. Yeah, we are the future, and that is the past. In the present we can change it,” the chorus starts. It continues: “And the road that we’ve chosen has been so long and dangerous. And the face of my father is filled with grief and anguish. Sometimes we forget, oh, sometimes we forget that the world is what we make it.” News stations picked up the video, but many conservatives responded negatively to the implications of the song, saying, “If you don’t like it, then leave,” Power recalls. “David and I would push back and say, ‘We live here. We’re from here. We don’t want to leave. We want to help improve (the state). We want to bring awareness and try to communicate a feeling that people legitimately have. We’re trying to recreate the human experience with music,’” Power says. “‘That’s what we’re doing. That’s what we’re called to do. So you can have whatever opinion you want, but no, we’re not going to leave. We are going to stay, and we are going to talk about these things because we want to and because we have the right to do that.’” Five years later, Power and Horton were two of many Mississippians who celebrated when the legislators voted to change the state flag back in June. “I knew that it was kind of an illadvised way to start a career, by starting with controversy, but it was a big moment for me as an artist where I (decided) that I’m going to talk about the things I’m passionate about,” Power says. “I’m not going to avoid saying things that I want to say just because I’m trying to make a living in the world of entertainment. I don’t feel like I should be muzzled just because people think my job is to simply make music.” courtesy Seth Power
is foot held in place against the accelerator of were natives to this state, had grown up in this state and had his white Toyota Tacoma, Seth Power recalled several family generations that came from this state, they the words that Nashville Songwriters Hall of told me about how it made them feel and how it seemed Famer Walt Aldridge had told him earlier that like a symbol of oppression,” Power says. day after listening to a guitar melody Power “It was a very eye-opening experience for me.” had been working on: “That sounds like a The topic continued to weigh on his mind when his wedding song.” friend David Horton, a Black hip-hop artist who goes by Along the course of the roughly four-hour drive from D. Horton, sent him a tack he received from a producer in Muscle Shoals, Ala., to his Brandon, Miss., home, the mu- Atlanta. Listening to it made Power think about the subject sician recorded himself singing song lyrics to accompany of the flag again, so he suggested he and Horton collaborate the melody. In six days he was marrying the love of his life, on a song that deconstructed these issues. Collette Usry, and he would be ready. Completing the song Agreeing, Horton began writing rap verses while the night before the ceremony, Power surprised his wife by Power independently wrote the chorus. When the pieces performing “I Do” just after their first dance, marking June were brought together in the studio, they meshed so seam15, 2019, as the single’s unofficial debut. lessly that the two recorded the entire song in under four Fast-forwarding to September of this year, Train hours. “Free” released in fall 2015, and a music video Tracks—an hour-long segment on SiriusXM’s The depicting the two artists performing the song while wearing Pulse—showcased “I Do,” Power’s first song to play on live radio in the United States. In the weeks since then, SiriusXM In the last year, Seth Power and other stations have played the track has released two albums, multiple times. and multiple radio stations “Having ‘I Do’ be picked up for the have played his single, “I Do.” radio is probably the most memorable accomplishment I’ve ever had, probably period,” Power says, emphasizing how meaningful it is for this song that holds so much significance for him and his wife to be heard by so many new listeners.
Developing as an Artist and Responding to COVID-19 Following the release of “Free,” Power released “Make it Mine,” his first single as a solo artist, in 2015. In 2017, he released a six-
