THE CMA AWARDS: COUNTRY RETURNS TO ITS ROOTS

When Carly Pearce won the 2021 Country Music Association Female Vocalist award, it suggested that the genre might be tacking back to its roots. With the 56th CMA Awards, the leaning-back to actual country is complete.

Lainey Wilson, the hard-edged “bell bottom country” artist from Louisiana, led the nominations with six. Broken Bow’s unabashed intersection of country and blues took this year’s highly competitive Best New Artist and Female Vocalist on her first nomination.

Cody Johnson, the fiercely independent Texas artist signed to Warner by Cris Lacy after six albums on his own, also picked up two awards, Single and Video of the Year, for the life-embracing, values-affirming "'Til You Can't." A purveyor of earthy, Texas-style music, he also harkens back to a more robust country sound.

Luke Combs was the night’s third double winner. Repeating as Entertainer of the Year and picking up Album for Growing Up, the young man who came to prominence as an outlier who found his own songwriting community has served as a reflection of the fans more than Music Row. If not a mandate, it was certainly a doubling down. With Old Dominion and Brothers Osborne's taking their fifth Group and Duo, respectively, both acts’ firmly entrenched sounds offered a sense that being true to your music over chasing hits matters.

And then Chris Stapleton picked up his sixth Male Vocalist of the Year. Always a groundbreaker, the man who exploded after his 2015 CMA duet with Justin Timberlake created the same kind of seismic impact by enlisting 1995 Album/1996 Female Vocalist winner Patty Loveless for the deep-Appalachia stunner “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.” The performance, which also featured Stapleton’s wife, Morgane, was stark and raw and viscerally reminded people where the genre came from.

Even in unexpected “pop” moments, such as Elle King and The Black Keys' homage to 2022 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Lee Lewis, there was a grit that had been missing from the genre for the past decade. Whether Wilson and BMI Writer of the Year HARDY's igniting sparks on the domestic-abuse-avenging “Wait in the Truck,” Miranda Lambert’s salty backstage-wannabe-skewering “Geraldene” (with wave after wave of pyro) or The War and Treaty's joining Brothers Osborne for a genre-exploding “It’s Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It),” which they recorded for the Stones tribute set Stoned Cold Country and which thrust Tina Turner’s Nutbush, Tenn., roots into a scalding mid-career Hank Williams Jr. meltdown, the country shone through.

From the opening Loretta Lynn tribute, which saw Carrie Underwood, Reba and Lambert tackle the recently departed legend’s greatest hits, to the Willie Nelson Award medley for Alan Jackson that gave Underwood, Dierks Bentley, Jon Pardi and Wilson a chance to salute the Newnan, Ga., songwriter/superstar, there was a real sense of what makes country music its own world. With songcraft, steel guitar, fiddle and rhythms that sweep dance floors without hip-hop accoutrements, Lynn and Jackson represented unseen people and a music that mined regionalism at its best. And Jackson's closing out the presentation with “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” was a benediction that was as much an I’d-rather-fight-than-switch endorsement of classic country than nostalgia for a genre pioneer. Like Loveless/Stapleton, the Lynn moment and Cole Swindell’s ‘90s-embracing “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” with a surprise Jo Dee Messina insert for the original “Heads Carolina” chorus, it was a celebration of why this music connected.

Ironically, in this age of TV talent shows, there was almost an over-reliance on cover songs. Instead of mining Ashley McBryde’s brilliant Lindeville for a slice of small-town quirk like “Brenda Put Your Bra On,” “Gospel Night at the Strip Club” or “Jesus Jenny”—which could all have been retro-fitted for her girl gang—the Everly Brothers/Linda Ronstadt cover “When Will I Be Loved” was the choice. It was great to see/hear Brandy Clark, Pillbox Patti and Caylee Hammack, but McBryde’s singular writing knack was lost. As always, pop-validators were enlisted; Katy Perry came in to sing with Thomas Rhett to create that “extra” extra. But in a night where country was genuinely embraced, it was more “one more number” than the standout moment. And that’s where country music in general, and on TV particularly, gets complicated.

Something for everybody is absolutely the Opry way; but at a ceremony to honor the best of the genre, it was truly the most-country things that mattered. With the winners also coming from the country side of the tracks, the watershed we were writing about over the last year of awards shows appears to have arrived.

Photos (from top): Lainey Wilson; Brothers Osborne; BMLG boss Scott Borchetta with Katy Perry and Thomas Rhett. Credits: Benjamin Askinas/CMA, Getty Images