2024 awards ceremony
The 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards were held on November 20, 2024, at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. The ceremony was broadcast live on ABC and was available to stream the 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.”
Winners and 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.
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.
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."