The 2023 CMT Music Awards went on the road this year, airing for the first time from Austin, Texas on Sunday night (April 2). It was an excuse to bring some Lone Star State flavor to the fast-paced show, which featured more than 20 performances from such country luminaries as Blake Shelton, Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Lainey Wilson and Darius Rucker, and celebrated the top videos of the past year.
The show, which aired live on CBS for the second year in a row after the ACM Awards decamped to Amazon’s Prime Video, opened cold with co-host Kelsea Ballerini addressing the mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School last week that left six dead and Music City reeling. The somber moment included Ballerini recalling her own experience in 2008 watching a classmate die from a shooting when she was in high school and calling for “real action.” That then gave way to celebration, as she and Kane Brown, co-hosting for the third time, proved again to be an amiable, nimble pairing.
Shania Twain, introduced by Megan Thee Stallion, accepted the CMT Equal Play award, calling for the country industry to “do our part to close the gap and provide an equal workspace for all talent. Let’s ensure that all our fellow artists get equal play, regardless of gender, age or race.” And the show tried to do just that, relying heavily on girl power throughout the evening. (Jelly Roll was still the night’s biggest winner, taking home all three awards for which he was nominated.)
The evening’s performances heavily relied on collaborations featuring country artists and rock acts performing the latter’s 90s hits. It was a gambit that worked, in large part because many of the rock fans of the ’90s are now country listeners.
Below are the top performances of the night.
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Wynonna and Ashley McBryde Show They Know What Love Is
Image Credit: Kempin/GI The Judds‘ last performance before Naomi Judd’s death last year was at the 2022 CMT Awards, when they sang their anthem, “Love Can Build a Bridge” — so it was only fitting that Wynonna return this year to showcase a song from her upcoming CMT special, which recreates the Judds’ 1991 initial final show in 1991. Joined by Ashley McBryde for an elegiac, slowed down version of Foreigner’s classic “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Judd took the audience to church, turning the song into her own personal testimony. When she declared, “Mama, you need to be here tonight,” she invoked goosebumps.
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Kelsea Ballerini’s Performance Is a Real Drag
Image Credit: Jason Kempin/GI If such things were handed out, Kelsea Ballerini’s performance of current single, “If You Go Down (I’m Goin’ Down Too)” easily won the award for best set of the night. Looking like something straight out of Barbie’s backyard and building on the retro pastel theme of the video, it featured Ballerini dressed like a ‘60s housewife, complete with teased hair and a bright green duster (under which she had on a floral romper), surrounded by equally festively dressed drag queens — including Manila Luzon, Kennedy Davenport, Jan Sport and Olivia Lux. Leave it to Ballerini, one of the few country artists not afraid to speak out on issues, to address the Tennessee anti-drag bill in a fun, but very obvious, way.
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Jelly Roll Takes Us to Church
Image Credit: Christopher Polk for Variety Just like Wynonna, rapper-turned-country artist Jelly Roll took the CMT Awards to church with his rising and rousing single, “Need a Favor.” The thumping track, featuring Jelly Roll accompanied by a gospel choir, includes the poignant line, “I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer,” which Jelly Roll delivered like a man seeking salvation. The crowd couldn’t get enough — and it felt like a new superstar was crowned, as Jelly Roll was the evening’s big winner, taking home three awards.
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All-Star Tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd Turns Austin into Alabama
Image Credit: Jason Kempin/GI Though it helps, you don’t have to be southern to love Lynyrd Skynyrd — as the show’s closing performance proved, with both Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash paying tribute to the band following March’s death of the last original member, Gary Rossington. Joined by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Gov’t Mule’s Warren Haynes, the Rolling Stones’ Chuck Leavell, Cody Johnson and the world’s finest backing vocalists, LeAnn Rimes and Wynonna Judd, the ensemble started slowly with Rodgers delivered a soulful “Simple Man,” before several members took over lead vocals for the southern rock anthem, “Sweet Home Alabama.” Johnson seemed right at home onstage with the legends, banging his head and playing air guitar during Gibbons’ and Slash’s smoking solos.
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Darius Rucker and The Black Crowes Talk to Angels
Image Credit: Christopher Polk for Variety If the Black Crowes were just starting now, their bluesy, swampy sound would probably make them a country act. The Crowes joined Darius Rucker for a down-and-dirty version of their 1990 hit, “She Talks to Angels,” with Chris Robinson and Rucker both in fine vocal form. Rucker is one of the top vocalists of any genre, and to hear him and Robinson trade off lines on the song about drug addiction (with the Rolling Stones’ Chuck Leavell on keys) was potent and powerful. The two acts also performed the song for a forthcoming edition of CMT Crossroads.
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Alanis Morissette With Lainey Wilson, Ingrid Andress, Madeline Edwards & Morgan Wade
Image Credit: Christopher Polk for Variety The evening was high on multi-generational and cross-genre girl power, as Carly Pearce joined Gwen Stefani for a spunky performance of the No Doubt’s 1995 classic, “Just a Girl,” and then country upstarts Ingrid Andress, Madeline Edwards, Morgan Wade and Lainey Wilson kicked off Alanis Morissette’s vitriolic “You Oughta Know,” also from 1995, before being joined by Morissette herself. Nearly 30 years later, neither the song nor Morissette has lost any of its primal urgency. The new rendition received a resounding standing ovation. Ashley McBryde spoke for all of us when she jumped out of her seat, raised her arm, flashed the rock horns and shouted, “Yes!”
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Gary Clark Jr. Pays Tribute to a Texas Hero
Image Credit: Christopher Polk for Variety Falling under the “When in Rome…” maxim, the CMT Awards leaned into the location of Austin and wisely decided to pay homage to one of Texas’ finest, the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, by having Austin native and fellow gunslinger Gary Clark Jr. pay tribute. In one of the most exhilarating performances of the night, Clark and his band played a blazing medley of SRV & Double Trouble’s “The House is Rockin’”/”Travis County Courthouse,” so fiery that it threatened to burn down the Moody Center.
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Carrie Underwood Rocks the House
Image Credit: Catherine Powell/GI for CMT In a show when the collaborations, most of them of non-country songs, dominated and outpaced the appearances by today’s current country hitmakers, Carrie Underwood served to show them she is still boss with a rollicking performance of “Hate My Heart.” Dressed in a black leather jacket and shorts with hearts emblazoned on them, the country Queen of Hearts took the audience outside the Austin Capitol to a fever pitch with her incomparable vocals and moves copped from her beloved buddy Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses.
