At CMAs, Ella Leads a Field of Bold Individualists
Ella Langley (Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)
The 60th Country Music Association Awards nominations could easily rebrand as The Ella Langley Show and be done with it.
The singer-songwriter received nine nominations, including multiple nods in Song and Single plus Video and Album if you add in her co-director and co-producer nods. It’s not just the momentum of “Choosin’ Texas,” the song-of-the-summer juggernaut that has shattered all records for a woman on the pop charts—it’s also her #1 “Be Her” that’s landing fans and industry alike.
For the Female Vocalist nominee, who won the Song, Single and Video Awards last year and Vocal Event in 2024, her insistence on a Fleetwood Mac-meets-Texas country sound has set her apart. Going your own way is a mandate, and like Alison Krauss’ Keith Whitley-fueled sweep in 1995, it suggests an industry reckoning with the reality that what works matters.
Even more than Langley’s sweep of everything she could possibly be nominated for, CMA’s 60th stands as a referendum on individuality, singular creativity and a near-rejection of the rinse/repeat post-bro-country dude/hot-girl female aesthetic that’s driven the mainstream country for the last several years. One need only see the return of Kacey Musgraves, with six nods—including Album for Middle of Nowhere, and the expert-panel-created first-slate-of-nominees Song for “Dry Spell”—and Stephen Wilson Jr. with four, including the solely written “Gary” and its co-directed video, to understand which way CMA voters lean.
While gentrification has destroyed the community of Music Row in the name of massive developments, high rises and corporatization, voters embraced artists and producers who are staunchly their own people—a trend ushered in by Lainey Wilson’s 2023 and 2025 Entertainer of the Year wins.
Suddenly, Entertainer isn’t a matter of variations on obvious male ticket sellers but a category that represents the genre’s diversity of voices. Western-edge Texan Cody Johnson, who won Male Vocalist last year and Album in 2023, will vie against Langley, working-woman Wilson, multiple EOTY winner Luke Combs and label-defying, blues-to-bluegrass eight-time Male Vocalist Chris Stapleton for the top honor. All have a strong sense of self, a strong hand in their music and a vision for what their country is.
Second most-nominated and seven-time Female Vocalist Miranda Lambert, whose fiery Texas-songwriter-informed country has always cut against the grain, is shaping the genre beyond her own artistry. Along with her Female Vocalist and two nods in Vocal Event for duets with Stapleton and Musgraves, she racks up three nominations as a producer and one as a songwriter on Langley’s Dandelion.
Further ratifying the true creator aesthetic—versus sitting in the room for the co-write—trad-country breakout and Male Vocalist nominee Zach Top, who won 2025 CMA New Artist, and the Texas-songwriter-influenced Parker McCollum, who won this award at the 2026 ACM Awards, receive coveted Album of the Year nods for Ain’t in It for My Health and Parker McCollum, respectively.
Taylor Swift returns to the CMAs for the first nomination in four years with a Single of the Year turn for “I Knew It, I Knew You.” It’s been 13 years since she’s won a CMA, and 13 is her lucky number.
Megan Moroney, the much-vaunted songwriter with the candy-colored palette, speaks to the Song of the Year category’s distinction. Rather than allow the nominees to be set by the larger voting body, the second ballot contains the names of the songs selected by a blue-ribbon committee to reflect excellence in the category. Having led the ACM nominations, the Female Vocalist’s “Beautiful Things,” like Wilson, Jr.’s “Gary” and Musgraves’ “Dry Spell,” came with a larger perspective about harsh realities.
Among established acts who’ve committed to their core identities are industrial-strength honky-tonk Country Music Hall of Fame inductees Brooks & Dunn, the CMAs’ all-time awards winners with 22 and favorites for Duo of the Year, alongside multiple winners Brothers Osborne and Dan + Shay as well as newcomers Muscadine Bloodline and Thelma & James.
Vocal Group sees multiple-time winners Lady A, Little Big Town, Old Dominion and 2025 winners The Red Clay Strays vying with Midland for the title. For these two acts, it’s a band aesthetic, The Strays rooted in Southern gothic gospel-blues and Midland in sweeping West Coast-Arizona tavern sound.
New Artist also reflects the diverse sense of what today’s country actually is. Beyond Wilson’s working-class rock austerity, Tucker Wetmore continues refining his take on modern classic country, Emily Ann Roberts delivers a trad-leaning freshness, acoustic-driven Avery Anna is a viral sensation and ACM Album of the Year nominee Carter Faith offers Musgraves-esque story songs. Each artistic voice is singular, and each career has its own calculus; some lean into social media harder and others work the road while a few use visual media and press, but they’re all building for the long haul.
While streaming and social media have impacted country in profound ways, they haven’t completely rewritten the game for country music. As Nashville is wont to do, when change hits, Music City remembers what it values most: songwriters who connect with people, whether it’s artists finding the songs or writing their own. Originality has always been the premium, though Nashville has never shied away from doing business. As in prior moments of massive growth, the more traditional CMA voters have once again leaned into their core values and delivered nominees who speak to people who work hard to earn their money, offer insight into how to live their lives and create something that stands out.
Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Even Langley’s supernova “Choosin’ Texas” speaks to this truth: At a time when tag-team writing sessions and producers maxed out their teams are customary, Langley, Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor went driving around, laughing and listening to music, then wrote the most perfect piece of classic ’70s-’80s-’90s two-step country imaginable.
Friends getting together, having a good time and trying to write a song. I’m pretty sure Harlan Howard, Bobby Braddock, Whitey Shafer, Don Schlitz, John Prine, Guy Clark and Jack Clement did it that way.