Morgan Wallen was crowned the CMA Entertainer of the Year winner at the 58th annual CMA Awards in Nashville a couple of weeks ago as of now.
He also didn’t even bother to attend the ceremony, and we haven’t heard from him since in terms of his thoughts on winning the award…not even a simple Instagram story, let alone a post about it.
The last thing Morgan actually posted on Instagram was from about three weeks ago, and that was about his upcoming Sand in My Boots Festival.
We should probably go ahead and point out how the CMA’s and Morgan have a kind of complicated history. Back 2021, Morgan was banned from even attending the awards show after he was caught on video earlier that year dropping a racial slur (which was kind of bs in context). Then over the past two years, fans have sounded off after believing Morgan was snubbed from the night’s top prize, losing to Luke Combs in 2022 and Lainey Wilson in 2023.
The man has been nominated for 14 different CMA awards overall (seven of them were from this years show alone and he was the most-nominated artist), the first nomination was for the New Artist of the Year in 2019. He was nominated for that same award in 2020, and he actually won it the second year, bringing his total up to two CMA awards in total as of a couple weeks ago.
The mainstream country industry as whole, and I mean all of the institutions, as in labels, artist management and PR agencies, actually care a hell of a lot about these bs awards. So, to appease the powers that be, I expected a press release with a quote from Morgan, or maybe a simple post on Instagram about what an honor it is to win, which is what everyone does, especially if you’re trying to play the Nashville game, so you can keep winning big awards.
His silence truly speaks volumes and it shows that he isn’t worried about any of that, because he doesn’t need to be at this point. I also can’t say that I blame him here. Morgan makes music for his fans and it’s the fans that make any artist successful. Nashville and industry elites don’t spend their money on tickets to a show, they don’t buy merchandise and they damn sure don’t buy…or stream music like fans do. Fans make the music and the artists into something more…by investing their time…and money into it.
I feel this marks a shift in how the awards have been viewed in the past by some of the genres biggest artists, who always make a big to-do about winning anything. When people like Willie Nelson and Loretta Lynn were winning Entertainer of the Year, that was more appropriate. Of course Waylon Jennings never did, so that should tell you a lot as well, and that man is the face of outlaw country music.
It seems like we’re all witnessing a changing of the guard in country music, and the power seems to be slipping from country radio and the mainstream labels. We’ve seen artists like Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who have become stadium seat fillers in a genre without being a part of the big machine. Zach Top, the Red Clay Strays, Wyatt Flores, the Turnpike Troubadours, Cody Jinks and Sturgill Simpson are all playing massive venues without mainstream country radio’s help.
Needless to say…it’s a damn good time to be a country music fan.