2024 CMA Awards: Full List of Nominees

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1. Cowboy Carter is the best album of any artist, country or otherwise, to be released this year. From the first to the final track, it is packed with energy, creativity, great talent, traditional instruments, and powerful messages. It honors black musicians that are part of the history of country music, but all too often overlooked. It celebrates the evolution of the sounds of country music and diversity of the audience of country music today. And, the artist who released the album happens to be one of the most successful music artists of all time, an artist with massive success touring worldwide, with more record sale than most of the other nominees combined, and inarguably one of the best voices of all time. Beyonce is an asset to any music genre that she enters, so when she spends several years writing music, collaborating with other talented artists, and producing an album for that genre, and then shows up on the doorsteps of that genre with her millions of fans behind her, you don’t “snub” her or slam the door in her face.
   This year’s CMA nominations, which have excluded Beyonce, sadly reflect the toxicity, ignorance, and hypocrisy that rings too frequently and too loudly in too many communities in the US today. With 7 nominations, Morgan Wallen leads the pack. This is the same Morgan Wallen that threw a chair at a cop from a 6 story bar, while wasted, and who was caught spewing racism and the N-word not too long ago. What?? Post Malone, with a new crossover album, has 4 nominations. Interestingly, both Beyonce and Post Malone debuted their country albums at #1 on The Billboard 200 list. During their first week, Post Malone had 250,000 album units earned, while Beyonce chalked up 407,000 album units earned. Shame on you CMA. Grow up already!

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   • …it simply is a piece of art too big for the cma mindset and frame. their bad.

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2. Some overall thoughts about this slate of nominees:

   The prevailing narrative has quickly become that Beyonce was “snubbed” by the CMA. I reject that framing because it implies that the CMA was ever seriously going to entertain the inclusion of Beyonce or Cowboy Carter in any way. They weren’t. As I said in my review of the album for Slant, it’s a work of provocation that dares the country music establishment to look itself in the eye, and there was absolutely no chance that an organization like the CMA, which profits off a business model of white male supremacy by design, was ever going to do that.

   “Texas Hold ‘Em,” which Kevin and I both wrote about at length upon its release back in the early summer, also wasn’t snubbed: It was gatekept out of the nominations. Again, this is by design. The Single Of The Year category stipulates eligibility criteria based upon a single’s chart performance. And because Beyoncé’s team declined to jump through the many, many, many hoops that the country radio machine sets up before a Program Director will even consider playing a single, “Texas Hold ‘Em” came nowhere close to meeting the arbitrary benchmarks for CMA eligibility, even though it was a massive multi-format hit across radio and streaming.

   There’s an argument to be made about the inclusion of Beyoncé’s work this year on merit, of course: I’d argue that Cowboy Carter is a superior album to the five nominees, especially those by Jelly Roll and Kacey Musgraves. But I’d also argue that it is best conceptualized as a work of true “Americana,” though its country ties have been downplayed and overlooked by those who are motivated to keep an “interloper” like Beyonce on the outside of their white picket fence.

   So, too, would “Texas Hold ‘Em” have been a superior nominee to at least four of the nominees for Single of the Year. And it’s not insignificant that the most deserving nominee in that category is by Shaboozey, who, of course, is a collaborator on Beyoncé’s album and whose own album is, again, superior to most of those nominated.

   The story of how historic and current patterns of racism play into this year’s CMA nominees, though, really should center around Kane Brown, who has been one of the genre’s most consistent and highest-quality hitmakers for years and who has exactly four nominations to his name, three of which were for a collaboration with Chris Young and none of which have been in a major category. At minimum, Brown should be up for both Entertainer Of The Year and Male Vocalist Of The Year.

   Of course, this is also inseparable from the 7 nominations for the unrepentant Wallen, supported by a white male whose crossover into the genre was welcomed with open arms. Voters at the CMA and ACM have both been somewhat gunshy about giving Wallen more than a few obligatory trophies, and I imagine that will continue here based upon the commercial successes of “I Had Some Help.”

   Elsewhere, it’s worth noting that this is the first year since 2005 that neither Miranda Lambert nor Carrie Underwood received a nomination. Though Lambert has a new album due in a couple of days and they could both resurface as nominees, it does feel like the end of an era. That someone as gapingly untalented as Megan Moroney has been declared the heiress-apparent is a slap in the face to the countless women– particularly women of color– in the current country space who could actually carry on the legacies of the genre’s greatest women.

   Carly Pearce’s fall from grace, similarly, is significant. Her new album is terrific, but it’s clear she’s lost her spot as Lainey Wilson’s “+1” for the industry allowance for women who can be successful at the same time. We’ve often been critical of her limitations, but compared to Moroney…

   There’s also considerable chatter that Zach Bryan was “snubbed.” As someone who is still very much not sold on his skill set, the only place I’d have slotted him in is for Entertainer Of The Year, on the strength of his monumental touring presence. And, in an absolute sense, that category should also have space for the likes of Billy Strings and Tyler Childers for the same reason.

   I wasn’t much impressed by The Red Clay Strays’ album, but thank the good Lord there’s finally a nominee in the Vocal Group category who feels like they’ve done something relevant in the last year. Turnpike and “Silverada” should be there, too, obviously, but this alone feels like progress. Tigirlily Gold should’ve taken Brooks & Dunn’s obligatory spot in the Vocal Duo category. As ever, Duo and Group should’ve been merged more than a decade ago.

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3. …”The prevailing narrative has quickly become that Beyonce was “snubbed” by the CMA. I reject that framing because it implies that the CMA was ever seriously going to entertain the inclusion of Beyonce or Cowboy Carter in any way. They weren’t.”

   i share this point of view. in court this might fall under: non compos mentis.

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