Sorry to barge in on all your Holiday revelry, but the news just came down that Carrie Underwood won’t be returning to host the CMA Awards in 2020, which she’s done for the last dozen years. And yeah, it kind of feels like a thing that’s worth remarking on.
Well well, it’s getting chippy out there after Eric Church and others lost the 2019 CMA Entertainer of the Year honor to Garth Brooks. At Eric Church’s show at The Anthem in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, November 16th, he was singing a rendition of “Are You Sure Hank Done It His Way” by Waylon Jennings, changing the lyrics to lash out at Garth.
As an addendum to all of the brewhaha last week surrounding Garth Brooks winning the 2019 CMA Entertainer of the Year over Carrie Underwood, a little context is perhaps needed. Though Stan armies love to war back and forth, behind the scenes things are often a lot more moderate and congenial.
On the day after the CMA Awards, it’s always important to take a deep breath, and remind yourself, “It’s just the CMA’s.” But it does feel important to address what turned out to be the biggest controversy Wednesday night, which was Garth Brooks winning Entertainer of the Year over Carrie Underwood.
Eric Church’s latest album Desperate Man will win the CMA Album of the Year in 2019, beating out Thomas Rhett’s Center Point Road, Dan + Shay’s self-titled release, Girl by Maren Morris, and Carrie Underwood’s Cry Pretty. This is the bold prediction Saving Country Music is putting out there right here and now.
Carrie Underwood will win the 2019 CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year when it is handed out on November 13th, 2019. Mark it down. She will beat out Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, Garth Brooks, and Eric Church for the top prize of the night. This isn’t necessarily an endorsement, nor is it any kind of rebuke. It’s simply a prediction.
Look, the semi controversy over the CMAs choosing to replace Brad Paisley as the long-time host in 2019 with Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire is water under the bridge at this point. But it is kind of amusing that the CMAs and ABC recently announced that Brad Paisley will be getting his own television special later this season.
In many respects, the CMAs did that this year with their 2019 nominations, or at least better than many years. But the Album of the Year nominations were especially easy to pick apart in 2019. The biggest reason to second guess these nominations is that this current awards shows cycle has been exceptional for excellent mainstream albums.
Many pop artists want to be included in country these days through collaborations or remixes to skim some of those fans off for themselves. But country music should be careful of continuing to allow this to happen. The music world was much better when pop was too sugary for country, and country was to corny for pop.
Completely unexpected, but absolutely welcome, Country Music Hall of Famer Alan Jackson is the beneficiary of a brand new documentary called Small Town Southern Man that has just been released via multiple streaming services (iTunes, Amazon Prime, etc.), and will receive a DVD release on June 28th.
Jason Aldean will receive the Dick Award for the Decade from the ACMs come April—“Dick” being for Dick Clark, who this decade award was just renamed after, and who luckily is dead so he doesn’t have to see his name besmirched by being associated with the likes of Jason Aldean.
It’s said that time is the harshest critic of all. If that’s the case, time has not been very kind to the music of Florida Georgia Line at all. The title of their new album ‘Can’t Say I Ain’t Country’ isn’t fooling anybody, and apparently the fickle pop country music fan has moved on en masse to the likes of Luke Combs and others.
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 was a night to honor the women of country music, rally support behind them, and remember the legacy of many of the women who have come before. The problem is, very few people witnessed it. Ratings for the 2018 CMT Artists of the Year were poor to put it mildly.
Carrie Underwood has set a slew of new landmarks with her new album ‘Cry Pretty,’ setting highs for her career, highs for a country artist, and highs for a woman making music in the country realm. And she does it with little support from country radio, which allowed the title track to stall on the format as her album was nearing release.
When you first heard about Carrie Underwood’s unfortunate fall and her need for hospitalization in November of 2017, it was hard not to feel bad for the country star regardless of how you felt about her music. Releasing the song “Cry Pretty” as part of the personal revelations about the injury made the story especially […]
A couple of days after Carrie Underwood called out country radio for not supporting strong women, it’s become official that Carrie Underwood’s latest single “Cry Pretty” is done at radio, will be the worst-performing single of her career, and has tanked two weeks ahead of her new album being released.
The role of mainstream country music in this contentious time of ever-present social cataclysm and perennial political polarization is starting to materialize, and in pretty conclusive form. Country music is seeing all the turmoil, and wanting to be a calming, unifying voice, instead of choosing sides, and lending to the discord.
Carrie Underwood co-produced her entire new record out in September. This takes Carrie Underwood—a top tier country performer—into virtually uncharted territory in the mainstream, at least in the near term. This move by Carrie Underwood is incredibly audacious for country, mainstream or otherwise, from a man or a woman.
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.
Carrie Underwood and songs like “Cry Pretty” will never be the cup of tea of many of country music’s more traditional fans. But it’s a far cry from the terrible pursuits of the Bro-Country era that now feel far in the past, and are quickly being replaced by a regime of more expressive, heartfelt, and enriching songs closer akin to country’s roots.
The news coming out of the Carrie Underwood camp is that she will be debuting a brand new single at the ACM Awards on Sunday (4-15), and regardless of how good or godawful the song is, I couldn’t be more happy, regardless of what the song turns out to be.
Country music needs Carrie Underwood right now. I don’t know that I would ever have fathomed typing those words a few years ago. But over the years, Carrie Underwood has gone from defining the edge of pop in country, to being one of the final remaining bright spots of talent in the mainstream.
Yes, this topic again. And if you don’t like reading about it, tough titty. Perhaps if mainstream country radio put out a modicum of effort to even try to hide the fact they’re outright excluding certain artists from radio play strictly due to their gender, we could shut the hell up about all of this.