ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC CREATES A NEW DYNAMIC

What started with Trixie Mattel in their promos and a move to Frisco, Texas, culminated in high cred/soul country songwriter Chris Stapleton taking Entertainer of the Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. What has been a massively shifting dynamic for the West Coast-based country music organization that moved to Nashville two years ago was more profoundly demonstrated by the win for the reticent guitarist who has swept every award imaginable—including multiple Album and Male Vocalist—yet seemed unlikely as Entertainer due to his preference to let the music speak.

With sustained, solid, arena-sized touring, if not major stadiums, plus his level of artistic achievement, charitable work, leadership and dignity—as well as expanding country’s audience, he filled out the awards criteria better than several other contenders. In Frisco, the true definition of Entertainer of the Year meant something—and Stapleton finally took home the top prize.

That recognition of doing the work but also reaching beyond the tropes and the industry “way of doing it” defined the night. Zach Bryan—largely a stranger to Music Row, though a Morgan Wallen-level streaming star who’s headlining festivals and arenas—and Hailey Whitters, the country-roots favorite who’s been shut out at Country radio, took home the New Male Artist and New Female Artist, respectively.

The biggest sweep of the night went to Louisiana’s Lainey Wilson, whose forthright country voice cuts to the heart. She took Album for the Outlaw-esque Bell Bottom Country as well as Female Artist, Vocal Event and Visual Media—the latter two for the searing “Wait in the Truck,” with Artist-Songwriter winner HARDY. A performer who leans into her band, displays an onstage physicality that’s not choreographed and knows how to talk to her audience, Wilson represents a different kind of female country star: one whose deeds and message harken back to the real-world grit of Loretta Lynn.

“To all the dreamers, don’t forget to be doers,” she said in one acceptance speech. Accepting for “Wait in the Truck,” she acknowledged the harshness of the #1 song’s domestic-violence and retribution themes, offering, “A lot of people related to this song, and I don’t want people to... But they did, and that’s important.”

Those wins, like the night itself, were important for the ACM and country music overall. Awards—Stapleton excepted—have often seemed like a juggernaut for momentum and industry politics. In Frisco, that convention was disrupted.

Even the Song and Single wins for Cole Swindell’s “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” which invoked 1999 ACM Top New Female Jo Dee Messina’s first #1, offered a strong look back to ’90s country, which is currently having a resurgence.

With Dolly Parton being Dolly en fuego (her cheeky, blush-inducing repartee with co-host Garth Brooks), a cappella (her touching requiem moment for Naomi Judd and Lynn, delivered with “Precious Memories”) and rocking (“World On Fire,” a high-concept, powerful performance from her upcoming Rockstar), the cultural icon pushed boundaries, tolerance and joy in her second year as host. She also reminded people that girl power and history matter.

2022 ACM Entertainer of the Year Miranda Lambert, up for Entertainer, Album and Female, earned one of the night’s few true standing ovations for her performance—in a diaphanous gown before a weathered-carnival set—of “Carousel.” A departure from her accustomed full-ballast delivery, the hushed ballad of a woman who leaves her dreams behind (but occasionally remembers them) was suffused with yearning and wide-open heart.

Ashley McBryde, nominated for Album, Female and Single, brought fist pumps of recognition from the women in the house with her Ashley McBryde Presents Lindeville tour du force, “Bonfire at Tina’s,” which featured Tony nominee Brandy Clark, Caylee Hammack, Pillbox Patti and a blistering solo from Brothers Osborne’s John Osborne. With a truth for a chorus—“Small-town women aren’t meant to get along/ But you burn one, boy, you burn us all”—solidarity was high, and their performances incited yowls from the crowd.

’90s country love also informed a Trisha Yearwood homage that matched the powerhouse vocalist with 2022 Female winner Carly Pearce for a crowd-pleasing medley of “Wrong Side of Memphis,” “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)” and Yearwood’s first single and #1, “She’s in Love With the Boy.” Swindell also tapped ’90s star Messina, who was in exceptionally strong voice, for “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” showing how powerfully songs from that era resonate.

These things are classic for a reason, and they endure, reinvented but respected; there may be lessons here for the industry to learn.

Cody Johnson, nominated for Song and Single for “’Til You Can’t,” was every inch the Texas rancher as he gave a fully committed performance of Willie Nelson’s “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” Where some artists with Johnson’s catalog would’ve insisted on their own song, he instead paid homage to the 90-year-old legend. Whether he recognized the potency of aligning with Nelson or not, he honored someone who mattered to him personally.

The Academy was not stuck looking back.

First-time Entertainer nominee Kane Brown delivered a propulsive “Bury Me in Georgia,” merging rap, country and rock in a sweltering tribute to where he’s from that felt true to the influences he regularly draws on. While Nashville’s not been paying attention, Brown has become a rock-solid major headliner with a musical thrust that reaches beyond country to include all kinds of faces at his show.

HARDY’s performance also merged emo, screamo and classic country on “TRUCK BED” that went from Hank Jr. to pulverizing by song’s end. Having long flirted with rock, country got its hardcore on.

That premise also worked the other way. A straight-up rapper, but Antioch, Tenn., born and raised, Jelly Roll honored ACM Lifting Lives with his wrenching, Kristofferson-esque “Save Me” featuring Wilson. Her poignant vocal in this song of self-doubt, destruction and feeling unworthy set up a strong contrast to her own performance.

After finishing the duet, Wilson walked off the flyer stage, dropped her tapestry duster and slayed with “Grease.” The full-bodied Southern-soul-country rocker fell somewhere between Bobbie Gentry, Lynn and Lynyrd Skynyrd, showing both Wilson’s dexterity and determination as an artist.

And yes, there was soul! The War and Treaty brought down the house with their face-to-face, seated performance of “Blank Page,” which erupted into a seismic, full-tilt gospel exhortation. If they’re country only by virtue of the roots they draw on, the Trotters offer a point of musical intersection that makes country so much more, in the same way Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music did decades ago.

With all the discussion of what country is, what defines stardom, who will last the way Parton, Yearwood, Messina and presenter/newly minted Country Music Hall of Famer Tanya Tucker have, the 5/11 show suggests authenticity and not buying the hype may be the answer. Show-opener Keith Urban continues his smooth rock/country sound with “Texas Time,” but it was his playing more than the production trick that thrilled, just as Jordan Davis on a stool with a single guitarist delivering “Next Thing You Know,” a la James Taylor evokes the subtle power of quiet delivery that made Don Williams a Hall of Famer.

Even Taylor Swift fave Ed Sheeran came to honor the songcraft and fill a doughnut in Luke Combs’ “Love You Anyway” with his own “Life Goes On.” In a WGA strike workaround, the pair then stepped side stage for one of the “impromptu” interviews with Bobby Bones that were sprinkled through the night to cover set changes.

Ultimately, Damon Whiteside, Raj Kapoor and Patrick Menton took the show on the road, found a new venue and created a gorgeous wall-to-wall two hours of music and awards. They used fire, pyrotechnics, hydraulic lifts, smoke, three stages and a lot of cool video and computer-generated effects. But more importantly, they had the good sense to lean into the music and the artists. By enhancing those things, they delivered something quite different from the familiar cavalcade of acts, badly matched collaborations to pimp pop stars, out-of-sync production and awards as an afterthought. They came to recognize what these artists created and achieved, and they more than met the challenge—they celebrated it.

Photos: Academy of Country Music