The media landscape in music just got a lot more cloistered, oligarchical, and insular. Announced recently, Rolling Stone’s parent company Penske Media Corp. (or PMC) has entered into a joint venture with Billboard’s parent company called MRC to bring the two biggest music media companies together.
Mickey Guyton made one of the greatest impacts during this week’s ACM Awards. But as we have seen from the media on numerous occasions, important moments for black country artists in the past are being overlooked to score a buzzy headline or tweet.
Look, lobbying for Carrie Underwood among the classic country crowd has always been an uphill battle. But the career of Carrie Underwood is a perfect example of why you can’t paint all pop country with the same broad brush.
Just remember, “It’s only the ACM Awards.” It’s just disappointing that one of their best presentations in perhaps a decade or more—and under difficult circumstances—had to be sullied at the very end by a silly and avoidable decision.
For the three hours of the presentation, we’ll be leaving quips, observations, and kudos where warranted in real time in an effort to make the awards at least somewhat palatable for those of distinguishing tastes, and who know what actual country music is supposed to sound like.
Remember, it’s just the ACM Awards. Less prestigious than the CMAs, and more susceptible to bloc voting and other dubious practices than most any other awards apparatus in country music and beyond, think of it more as a performative infomercial for the mainstream of country music.
The 2020 Americana Music Awards will not be happening on Wednesday, September 16th at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville as initially planned. Though the American Music Association had already cancelled their annual AmericanaFest for September months ago, the organization was hoping to move forward with the awards.
Originally scheduled to occur on Sunday, April 5th in Las Vegas, the ACM Awards will now be held at The Grand Ole Opry House, the Ryman Auditorium, and the Bluebird Cafe on September 16th, 2020. However, that’s the same night and location of the Americana Awards.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Saving Country Music 2019 ACM Awards LIVE blog. As the presentation transpires over the evening we’ll be leaving real time quips and observations, snark, praise, disapproval, and whatever else is fancied in real time and completely unscripted.
Reba McEntire is about to release a new album on April 5th called ‘Stronger Than The Truth,’ and this release may be way more significant that just a late career entry by an aging star that country radio has long since put out to pasture. Reba already promised us it was going to be the most country record of her career.
It’s cool that the ACM Awards spectrum out their annual “Best New Artist” award to male, female, and duo/group categories to give up-and-comers that much more opportunity for recognition. But it’s also lame how they report who actually won on a random Monday with a quick email.
The ACM Awards announced their 2019 nominees on Wednesday (2-21), and it felt so liberating to not feel the need to immediately deliberate over the organization’s conclusions, and instead regard them with the tacit relevance they probably deserve.
It’s easy to pawn off the fault for the inappropriate moment on Kane Brown, but Kane is surprisingly saying he wasn’t on board with the moment either, and it was the ACM choreographers and producers who insisted on it. “It was super awkward. Lauren was like, ‘Might as well go ahead and grab his butt too!'”
When the Miranda Lambert camp announced the next single they’d be sending to country radio was the mid-tempo “Keeper of the Flame,” it didn’t leap off the page as a smart pick for today’s radio landscape. But that probably wasn’t the most important consideration that worked itself into the calculus.
When we saw the expansive list of performances scheduled for the 2018 ACM Awards Sunday night (4-15) in Las Vegas, we knew something would need to be axed from the presentation to make room. During most every awards show in the modern era, performers and dignitaries of note who have passed away in the last year are honored.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the official 2018 ACM Awards LIVE blog. For those of you not familiar with this exercise, for the next three hours we will be ranting and raving, holding feet to the fire, showering others with praise who are worthy, and trying to make the excruciating practice of watching a country music show that much less painful.
All the information on the 53rd Annual ACM Awards in one place, including the presenters, the performers, the collaborations, the nominees, and other things to watch for. Will Chris Stapleton have another big night? What do traditional country fans have to look forward to (if anything)? And awards that have already been handed out.
Everything is better with a little bit of Alan Jackson. Even if it is just a full-sized cardboard cutout of him from the 90’s with a mullet pouring out of the back of his cowboy hat stuck in the corner of a record store, his mere presence reminds you of a time when popular country music didn’t completely suck.
So here we are once again staring at a list of the nominees for the ACM Awards, with few surprises, lots of predictable stuff, and finding ourselves full of self-reflection on if we should even care about the annual country music gala that is most susceptible to bloc voting and horse trading.
Miranda did what any artist with a somewhat lagging album hopes to do with the opportunity an awards show can present, which is press a big reset button. Giving up on her current single “We Should Be Friends,” Miranda Lambert debuted “Tin Man” on the ACM Awards as the album’s next offering to radio.
Some fans began to smell something fishy when they noticed that “Die a Happy Man” won the ACM Award for Single of the Year at the 2016 ACM Awards. How could the song still be eligible if it was eligible for the 2016 awards as well? The answer is that it either wasn’t, or perhaps the ACM Voting Criteria was changed.
Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Saving Country Music 2017 ACM Awards LIVE blog! For three hours we’ll be ranting and raving, running down the winners, and doing our best to highlight the few bright moments in what otherwise promises to be the an annual exercise in embarrassing the true country music fan. Instead of sitting pat, we stand up and let our voices of dissent be heard.
In the entire 52-year history of the Academy of Country Music Awards, there has never been female winner of the organization’s Songwriter of the Year award, until now. Lori McKenna, who has been on one incredible run with her solo-written song “Humble and Kind,” has broken what appears to be a half century-long barrier.
All the information on the 52nd Annual ACM Awards in one place, including the presenters, the performers, the collaborations, the nominees, and other things to watch for. Will Chris Stapleton have another big night? What can traditional country fans have to look forward to? And awards that have already been handed out.