Premiere: Mercy Bell preps ’90s country EP with title track, ‘Golden Child’ -

As progressive as television shows like Will & Grace and Sex and the City were, there remained a great deal of shame growing up in the ’90s. Having called a small Appalachian town home, I couldn’t be who I truly was — I knew I was queer then, but out of fear I kept it to myself and pretended I had a Britney Spears poster plastered on my wall because I had a crush on her. Oh, the good ole days. With her new song “Golden Child,” premiering today, Americana powerhouse Mercy Bell reflects upon her own experiences splitting time between Massachusetts and California.

“Plan B and a Gatorade, another Walgreens on a Sunday / Blonde hair driving getaway, cause no one has to know,” sings Bell, slipping in and out of the shadows herself. “Hide the black marks with white lies / Try to sell the alibis / We can’t have a golden child with mud on his face / God forbid we have a little grace.”

Co-written with Sumiko Sprinkle and Cameron Newby, the song found the trio bonding “over all growing up as ‘good kids’ who struggled with things we thought we had to hide: mental health, trauma, grief, and sexuality. We talked about how all these ‘perfect’ people really are not,” Bell tells B-Sides & Badlands. “How the idea of ‘perfect’ actually hurts us all and that living in shame eats away at us and kills us all slowly. And how our lives got so much better when we stopped living in shame.”

Pulling inspiration from a Tom Waits quote (“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”) and her own mantra (“get more free”), Bell tossed out the opening line, and the rest is history, really.

Mercy Bell’s forthcoming Golden Child, the long-awaited, totally unexpected follow-up to 2019’s self-titled LP, tips its hat to ’90s country and many greats on which the singer-songwriter grew up. From Shania Twain and Travis Tritt to Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and Alan Jackson, her influences run far and wide, culminating in a seven-song concept record, uprooting various perspectives from fictional characters.

Golden Child (produced with John Bohannon) drops everywhere August 6.