58th Annual Country Music Association Awards

58th Annual Country Music Association Awards
Date	November 20, 2024
Location	Bridgestone Arena, Nashville, Tennessee
Hosted by	Luke Bryan Peyton Manning Lainey Wilson
Most nominations	Morgan Wallen (7)
Television/radio coverage
Network	ABC, Hulu

The 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards are to be held on November 20, 2024, at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. The ceremony will broadcast live on ABC and be available to stream next day on Hulu.

Background

On September 30, 2024, the association announced that Lainey Wilson, would join fellow CMA award winner Luke Bryan and NFL superstar Peyton Manning as the pair would once again return as the hosts for the upcoming ceremony. Nominee eligibility ran from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.Voting for the CMA Awards Final Ballot ends Tuesday, Oct. 29.

George Strait was announced as the recipient of the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award on November 12, 2024. A statement by the CMA chief executive officer Sarah Trahern read “There have been few other artists as authentically Texas and authentically country as George Strait, and country music fans all over the world have been better for it. As a three-time CMA entertainer of the year and the most nominated artist of all time, he serves as an inspiration and icon to many of the great, new artists we know today. I am thrilled we are awarding him with this deserving honor.”

Nominees

On August 28, CMA announced that the list of nominees will be released on, Monday, September 9.Morgan Wallen leads in nominations with 7 nods.

George Strait received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Entertainer of the Year	Album of the Year
Luke Combs Jelly Roll Chris Stapleton Morgan Wallen Lainey Wilson	Deeper Well — Kacey Musgraves Fathers & Sons — Luke Combs Higher — Chris Stapleton Leather — Cody Johnson Whitsitt Chapel — Jelly Roll
Male Vocalist of the Year	Female Vocalist of the Year
Luke Combs Jelly Roll Cody Johnson Chris Stapleton Morgan Wallen	Kelsea Ballerini Ashley McBryde Megan Moroney Kacey Musgraves Lainey Wilson
Vocal Group of the Year	Vocal Duo of the Year
Lady A Little Big Town Old Dominion The Red Clay Strays Zac Brown Band	Brooks and Dunn Brothers Osborne Dan + Shay Maddie & Tae The War and Treaty
Single of the Year	Song of the Year
“A Bar Song (Tipsy)” — Shaboozey “Watermelon Moonshine” — Lainey Wilson “Dirt Cheap" — Cody Johnson “I Had Some Help” — Post Malone (ft. Morgan Wallen) "White Horse" — Chris Stapleton	“Burn It Down” — Hillary Lindsey, Parker McCollum, Lori McKenna and Liz Rose “Dirt Cheap — Josh Phillips “I Had Some Help” — Louis Bell, Ashley Gorley, Charlie Handsome, Jonathan Hoskins, Post Malone, Ernest Keith Smith, Morgan Wallen and Chandler Paul Walters “The Painter” — Benjy Davis, Kat Higgins, Ryan Larkins "White Horse" — Chris Stapleton, Dan Wilson
New Artist of the Year	Musician of the Year
Megan Moroney Shaboozey Nate Smith Mitchell Tenpenny Zach Top Bailey Zimmerman	Tom Bukovac, Guitar Jenee Fleenor, Fiddle Paul Franklin, Steel Guitar Rob McNelley, Guitar Charlie Worsham, Guitar
Music Video of the Year	Musical Event of the Year
“Dirt Cheap" — Cody Johnson “I Had Some Help” — Post Malone (ft. Morgan Wallen) “I'm Not Pretty" — Megan Moroney “The Painter” — Cody Johnson “Wildflowers and Wild Horses” — Lainey Wilson	"Cowboys Cry Too" — Kelsea Ballerini (with Noah Kahan) “I Had Some Help” — Post Malone (ft. Morgan Wallen) “I Remember Everything” — Zach Bryan (ft. Kacey Musgraves) “Man Made a Bar” — Morgan Wallen (ft. Eric Church) “You Look Like You Love Me” — Ella Langley (ft. Riley Green)
Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award
George Strait

Milestones

• Little Big Town has the longest consecutive nomination streak for Vocal Group. They have been on the Final Ballot since 2006—19 years in a row.
• Lainey Wilson has the opportunity to become just the 6th woman to win Female Vocalist of the Year three years in a row. Only Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Martina McBride, Reba McEntire, and Tammy Wynette have accomplished the feat.
• Chris Stapleton has the opportunity to extend his Male Vocalist of the Year win count to eight, which would be the second time he has won the award in four consecutive years. He currently holds the record in this category with seven wins.
• Chris Stapleton has the chance to win four of the top awards in a single year: Entertainer of the Year, Album of the Year, Male Vocalist/Female Vocalist/Group/Duo of the Year and Song of the Year: a feat only completed by Vince Gill, in 1993 and Alan Jackson, in 2002.
• Old Dominion has the chance to set the record for consecutive Vocal Group of the Year wins this year with seven. They currently share the record of six with The Statler Brothers, Little Big Town, and Rascal Flatts.
• Both Brooks & Dunn and Chris Stapleton have the opportunity to become the most winning CMA Awards artists of all time this year. Brooks & Dunn are currently tied with Vince Gill at 18 wins and a Vocal Duo victory would move them ahead to 19. For Stapleton, he currently has 16 wins and is nominated for five awards this year, so winning three of the five would move him into first.
• Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood have their nomination streak ended after nearly two decades of being nominated in every ceremony since 2005 and 2006 respectively.

Controversy

Following the Country Music Association's announcement of the nominations, numerous US and international publications and music websites criticized the awards ceremony's decision not to nominate Beyoncé and her eighth studio album Cowboy Carter, as well as the lead single "Texas Hold 'Em", in their respective categories, despite the cultural impact and commercial performance to the country genre of the entire project. The event was blamed for conservatism and racism against black artists, also referring to the singer's performance of "Daddy Lessons" with The Chicks at the 2016 CMAs, in which the artist herself said she did not feel welcomed by the award ceremony.

Aja Romano of Vox wrote that although there may be "logistical reasons" behind the snub, "the CMA has a noticeable pattern of erasing and sidelining Black women" and that "Beyoncé is actively aware of this gatekeeping, [...] It's hardly any wonder she distanced herself and her album from the country establishment from the start; she likely knew well before the rest of us that the CMAs were never going to let her in the door". Highlighting that the first black woman to win an award at the CMAs was Tracy Chapman for Luke Combs' cover of "Fast Car" in 2023, Larisha Paul of Rolling Stone wrote that it "feels less like honorable accomplishments and more like bright red indicators of the sectors of the industry that are most resistant to change" and stating that "the institution has barely made an effort to recognize Black artists to begin, so at some point the snubs begin to register as expected rather than surprising".

US nonprofit civil rights organization Color of Change president Rashad Robinson accused the ceremony to not recognized African Americans country musicians and the history of the genere, stating: "Recognizing Beyoncé at the CMAs would force everyone to confront a multitude of truths: the roots of country music in Black music, the history of racism in country music and the prospect of having to give up not only their white audiences but the part of their audience that can't stand to see Black excellence succeed in this country. It would also force them to confront the one enclave of culture they use as an escape from ever having to see Black people: their music".

On September 17 in an interview with Variety, nine-time CMA award winner, country music legend, and Cowboy Carter collaborator, Dolly Parton spoke on Beyonce's apparent snub, "She's a country girl in Texas and Louisiana, so she grew up with that base. It wasn't like she just appeared out of nowhere [...] There's so many wonderful country artists that, I guess probably the country music field, they probably thought, well, we can't really leave out some of the ones that spend their whole life doing that [...] I think it was just more of what the country charts and the country artists were doing, that do that all the time, not just a specialty album."