ACM Awards Presented a Utopian Picture of Country — Steeped in Tradition, and Dominated by Women. We’ll Take It

If you were to judge the current state of country music solely by what you saw on Thursday night’s Academy of Country Music Awards show, you’d be riding pretty high in the saddle in your feelings about where the genre is at, at least if you come from a position of harboring some deep respect for where the music has been and where it still could be. For one thing, neo-traditionalism is back, or it was in the ACMs’ vision of things. Not only were country’s relative elders constantly visible throughout the show, but even the still-rising stars and newcomers on view seemed to be echoing the sounds and attitudes of previous generations, in a way we haven’t seen so pervasively in years.

Cody Johnson, one of the hottest guys in country right now, and possible future entertainer of the year material, is something you could’ve assumed was going extinct: a genuine “hat act” — in the old-school sense where that didn’t mean a backwards ballcap. He won song of the year for the earthy “Dirt Cheap,” which made him an obvious choice to duet (or trio-et) on a collab with the revived Brooks & Dunn on the oldie “Red Dirt.” But the best evidence that everything old is new again was in the ACMs’ new artist picks. Besides Red Clay Strays, who did not appear on the telecast but won for best new group, you had the invigorating double-punch of Zach Top winning for new male artist of the year and Ella Langley in the best new female artist slot. Top came out with his acoustic guitar to sing “Use Me,” a ballad that brought with it the sexual-romantic moral ambiguity of old, and if you squinted your eyes or ears, you could imagine we were back in the ’70s or ’80s, before these types of songs gave way to sippy-cup country, which in turn gave way to pure partying.

And then how about Langley, who came into the ceremony with the most nominations and also walked away with the most wins? When her throwback-sexy duet with Riley Green, “You Look Like You Love Me,” won single of the year, Green came to the podium and said, as a side note, “I want to say how cool it is that a song with talking verses won an award,” referring to the recitative moments that once were a country staple. In her own acceptance speech, Langley thanked inspirations like Conway Twitty and David Allen Coe. And you might have thought: Wait, a 26-year-old hottie is citing the men who brought us “I’d Love to Lay You Down” and “Now I Lay Me Down to Cheat”? Is someone feeding her these lines through an earpiece? But those references were as real as her Alabama twang. What did we do to deserve this?

But just as notable a skew was in how the 2025 ACM Awards were dominated by the female of the species… pretty much in inverse proportion to their minuscule representation on the country charts. If things start from the head down, having Reba McEntire as host was a start in that direction. But the ayes had it when it came to the voting, and ACM members really had a thing this year for two younger women in particular: Lainey Wilson (of course), who is standing on the shoulders of Reba, and Langley, who is already standing on the shoulders of Wilson, as microgenerations quickly come up from behind. If Langley came out slightly ahead in the wins, Wilson was close behind in numbers, and came though in the two most covetable categories, entertainer of the year and album of the year, among others. With their mutual domination, it came close to seeming like a can-a-guy-even-catch-a-break kind of year. That’s no one’s airplay chart reality, of course — it’s more like opposites day — but if the cream is going to rise to the top somewhere, it ought to be at an awards show.

Wilson is just about in arguably the best thing to happen to country music since Miranda Lambert, who in turn was one of the best things to happen since Reba. So it felt intuitively natural — but by no means commercially inevitable — when those three teamed up for the premiere of a new collaborative single, “Trailblazer” (co-penned by Lambert, Wilson and the brilliant Brandy Clark). It’s about the passing of torches among generations, and generations of women specifically, with McEntire singing to her next-gen sidekicks: “Dotty and Loretta, Patsy and Tammy too / They gave me a seat at the table and I’m saving one for you.” Lambert and Wilson joined her in singing, “Talk about a trailblazer / I’m rolling down the road you paved.”

The ACMs’ producers seemed to have an agenda that went beyond just going with the will of the people in affording Wilson and Langley so many nominations and wins. The presentation of the female artist of the year trophy had an Oscars-style assemblage of previous winners forming a lineup to heap praise on this year’s nominees, something that was not afforded the menfolk in the equivalent gender category. The sight of Martina McBride, Gretchen Wilson, Sara Evans, Crystal Gayle and Wynonna Judd all in a row was a reminder of a time when female giants walked the earth. It would have been merely wistful, if the celebration of women ended there.

But some of the performances by younger female artists on the show made it feel like that epoch never went away. Lambert sang a song from her latest album that is one of the best of her career, “Run.” (Given that it is from all appearances a belated deep-dive into her divorce from Blake Shelton, you had to wonder how the backstage roulette was arranged to allow or not allow those exes to share space, but that’s an imagining for another time.) Lambert was then joined by Langley for “Kerosene,” marking the 20th anniversary of the former’s first album, and it was clear just how intergenerationally good country fans have it right now, at least those who are inclined to see women as reasonably the lettuce and tomatoes of a televised country salad. (There’s no shame for the male artists in being croutons, for once.) There was also another of country’s brightest young stars, Megan Moroney, on the scene, and of course Kelsea Ballerini, celebrating a real milestone in having gotten the upgrade in her career from amphitheaters to being a legit arena headliner… all completing the picture of emergent contemporary queendom.

It’s just coincidence that the ACMs are now being brought to you by Amazon, but with country seemingly subject in this show to its older and younger female overlords, the dominance of women was positively… Amazonian.

Whether it was in deference to this being an anniversary show with a round number or just the whim of the producers, tradition (cue Tevye here) was also getting a big play, with a tender all-star tribute to Alan Jackson, who was receiving the ACMs’ first Alan Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award. (Presumably this honor will age better than Michael Jackson getting MTV’s first Michael Jackson Award has.) The show also opened with a 12-minute medley of numbers that have won the ACMs’ song of the year award in past decades. That sort of gambit may be out of the goodness of the producers’ hearts, or it may be a more mercenary acknowledgement that the viewers most likely to tune in for awards shows are not the ones who are driving the streams for Morgan Wallen and Post Malone right now (both of whom were MIA and shut out in the final voting, btw, despite their high nomination totals).

But is any of this a sign of real or lasting change in the genre as it’s popularly received, and streamed, now? When it comes to the traditional sounds being emphasized, you could say yes: the ascension of Cody Johnson and Zach Top is an unmistakable signpost. When it comes to women, well, no. Wilson has been accepted as a career artist, clearly, with her back-to-back entertainer of the year wins. It’s too early to know whether Langley is also due for that longevity, or whether the Academy members just really, really liked that one song (which did have a dude on it, too). But she sure seems like a keeper, and It’d be nice to think that Langley will keep on keeping on as an airplay staple, because one women added to the firmament counts for a lot right now. Women’s representation on the charts has never been more meager. Dr. Jada Watson’s data for 2024 showed that women got 8.39% of the airplay on country radio. In other words, the format still isn’t giving women even a tithe.

But on the ACMs Thursday night, it felt like about 1,000% representation, as we got caught up in the spirit of things. Waking up on Friday morning and turning on the radio might feel like a cold splash of water on the face, but Thursday night was a nice dream that could yet translate further across the board. As Langley might put it: When it came to women at this year’s ACMs, we actually looked like we love them.

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