Oh thank God. The CMT Awards are no longer, at least for now, and likely forever. And it couldn’t have come sooner, or to a more deserving presentation. It was country music’s ugly stepchild of an awards show.
The 2024 ACM Awards had many pondering the question, is it better for an awards show to be bad for the inadvertent entertainment value as opposed to being so boring you want to gouge your eyeballs out?
I saw Jason Aldean perform on the 2024 CMT Awards, and now I’m a RACIST! Aldean performed in front of the 27-story University of Texas Tower in Austin, and murdered it harder than Charles Joseph Whitman.
Lainey Wilson is the first woman in twelve years to win Entertainer of the Year. She’s only the 2nd woman to win it since 2000 (Taylor Swift won it twice). How in the world could Lainey Wilson pull off such a thing?
It turns out that the people of country music chose Morgan Wallen to be the inaugural People’s Choice Country “Artist of 2023” and other major awards. But you would have no clue this happened by watching the awards.
It feels very strange to even talk about the CMA Awards at this moment in country music when everything else is centered around the wild success of wild-assed and under-produced guys like Zach Bryan and Oliver Anthony.
It goes without saying that at this moment in history, everyone in America is incensed and sickened by the level of gun violence plaguing society, and specifically the prevalence of mass shootings, and especially school shootings.
The 2023 CMT Awards could very well go down in country music history as a significant moment, but it won’t be for the reasons the producers of the presentation or their proponents in the media hoped for, or will purport it to be. And no, we’re not just talking about the polarizing political moments…
This weekend, Police and Fire personnel had large swaths of downtown Austin cordoned off due to a mass casualty/hazardous exposure event, also known as the CMT Awards. The barriers and checkpoints weren’t there to keep freeloaders out, it was to keep the grotesque infection of pop country quarantined.
After NBC Universal purchased a 30% stake in the Grand Ole Opry’s parent company Ryman Hospitality in 2022, you knew there would be an effort to cross-pollinate the two companies for better or worse. Lo and behold, come September we will now have the “People’s Choice Country Awards.”
So now here comes Blake Shelton with a photoshopped mullet, releasing what he’s marketing as a 90s-style country single called “No Body.” But unlike some of these other artists professing their proficiency with 90s country, ol’ Blake Shelton was actually around and playing music at the tail end of the era.
Everybody wants to be 90s country these days, but nobody wants to live through an era without the wide proliferation of the internet, and when cell phones looked like carry-on luggage. But if you want the real stuff, you’re always best going directly to the source, like Ronnie Dunn.
If all you have to prove country music’s intrinsic racism that is regularly cited in conversations and articles is the Lil Nas X anecdote, or the Beyoncé anecdote, or the Morgan Wallen story, then you really don’t have any proof at all.
The Grand Ole Opry is celebrating its 95th Anniversary with a big primetime special on Sunday, February 14th on NBC. Called ‘Grand Ole Opry: 95 Years of Country Music,’ it comes as the Opry is enjoying arguably one of its biggest resurgences in interest in the institution’s history.
As some of the dust begins to settle from the fallout of Morgan Wallen’s inappropriate and offensive use of the N-word, there’s an addendum that needs to be addressed in regards to the accusations of a double standard pervasive in country music.
If anyone in country music has ever deserved to have their career unceremoniously wiped and cancelled, inadvertently or otherwise, it might be Chase Rice. Nonetheless, the criticism of his recent concert that has made him public enemy #1 deserves some context, and a deeper discussion.
If you’re wondering just how much the music of Kenny Rogers meant to fans, this is a pretty good indication. The Country Music Hall of Famer passed away on March 20, and since then sales and streams of his music have spiked dramatically, putting The Gambler on the top of the Billboard Country Albums chart for the first time in 35 years.
As tax season approaches and we get the opportunity to tie a bow around the doings of 2019, it’s always interesting to look back on the year at the Grand Ole Opry to see which performing members are paying their proper dues to country music’s most historic institution, and which one’s aren’t.
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.
As a country music fan, you just want to proudly be able to profess to people your appreciation for this music that you hold such a passion for. You want to believe in its institutions, and that the best and the brightest of a generation are foisted forward and given the greatest opportunities.
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.
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.
We were so swept up in praising ourselves for all the gains made in the independent realm of country music in 2017, it wasn’t until here in the dwindling moments of the year that we realized just what a dreadful era 2017 posed 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.