Our Country

When Miko Marks released her sophomore album It Feels Good in 2007, the country singer-songwriter likely didn’t realise that it would be nearly 14 years before she’d share its follow-up. A wildly talented vocalist and songwriter, the Flint, Michigan-born Marks was overlooked by the primarily white country music establishment and left Nashville for Oakland, carving out a niche for herself in a more welcoming local music scene. “I didn't plan on doing another album,” Marks tells Apple Music. “I just was done. I just didn't see another one in my future, so I'm really happy that I did it, and I think I'm going to do more.” Our Country is Marks’ triumphant return to recorded music, a project she embarked upon after reconnecting with former bandmates and collaborators. Tracks like “Goodnight America” and “We Are Here” reckon with the life-or-death consequences of systemic racism for Black people, with the powerful track “Mercy” offering a healing prayer to Black families shattered by police brutality. Marks includes her own versions of the hymn “Not Be Moved” and the oft-covered Stephen Foster song “Hard Times”, the latter of which Marks reclaimed in light of Foster’s history of racism. Below, Marks walks Apple Music through each of Our Country’s tracks. Ancestors “When we wrote ‘Ancestors’, I wrote the first line, ‘Guide my feet as I walk this road.’ I was just like, ‘I'm coming back into country music and, whoo, I don't know what this is going to look like for me. I'm going to call on all of my ancestors, all of those that have gone before me, for strength, for encouragement.’ I do believe that there are guiding forces out there leading me in the way that I should go, and also giving us strength to get through these times that we're in.” Hard Times “‘Hard Times’ was a song that I had heard, but I didn't know the origins of the song. I did some research about Stephen Foster and his racist lyrics and other songs and performing minstrel shows, and then I ran across Mavis