Issue #99: Stop Telling Ella Langley to Smile and other ACMs Thoughts

Yes, I watched the whole dang thing.

By Marissa

I didn’t mean to watch the ACM’s live – at best, I usually watch country award shows at my own leisurely pace, meaning so I can fast forward through the terrible jokes. But for whatever reason, when I threw the show on the television after dinner last week, I couldn’t turn my eyes away. Not because the whole thing was some triumph in Broadcasting (though there a couple very good performances, more on that later) but because there was just so much to think about in terms of what was happening between the lines and off the stage.

Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty Images

I don’t tend to go to awards shows in person – if you read this newsletter regularly, you know I was banned from the CMAs for years because they didn’t like what I wrote the one singular time I showed up (to be fair, the entire staff responsible for that has been rolled over, so I’m not pointing fingers at anyone there currently). It’s all a celebration of the “family” though, and who is allowed to come to the table, be it journalists happy to do the bidding or, most importantly, the artists who get to show up on stage and preform. And that group is a very select, insular one. We all know very well we’re not seeing Sierra Ferrell, Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, Margo Price, Orville Peck or many many others up there.

This year, we added Shaboozey, Ella Langley and Zach Top to the mix, which, great! I will applaud wins. But when I turned off the ACMs, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all – about how who and what was missing spoke volumes, about how many things had gone unsaid, and about a couple great performances that stood out from the pack. So, here we go.

LeAnn Rimes, the great: Honestly, I think I blame LeAnn for sucking me in to watch the show (love you LeAnn!) because her performance of “Blue” was so stunning. In a soft, slow performance accompanied by strings, LeAnn showed that she is still one of the best vocalists to ever grace this genre, always in perfect balance between tasteful and dynamic and never missing a second of emotional impact. But the minute her performance was over, I found myself getting angry: angry for how vile this industry treated her when she was barely an adult, expelling her for whatever sort of purity crimes they only subject women to. Angry for how when we do this we rewrite history to reflect a perfectly male cannon and exclude how influential someone like LeAnn was and is, angry for how much better the genre would have been with her in it (also angry for how it always seems like we find a convenient way to push out women who are outspoken about equality for all, as LeAnn always was and is). She is so gracious to show up to an event like this, bringing her best country music self. Country music does not deserve her anymore, but we are very lucky she shows up.

Do not tell Ella Langley to smile: Watching Ella Langley perform and win at the ACM awards this year felt like Kacey Musgraves circa 2013/2014 all over again – not because they sound at all alike, but because the criticism of her face and demeaner when accepting her award was, for some reason, on the table. Apparently the internet wanted her to smile more? Look more grateful? Are we really doing this kind of shit again? Ella has spoken publicly about her struggles with mental health, which is actually an incredible thing for a new artist to do. And we never expect anything from the genre’s men – hell, Morgan Wallen doesn’t even show up. Side note on Ella: I was disturbed by how some men seemed amused that she (a “hottie”) mentioned Conway Twitty, as if this is something of note because she is satisfying to the male gaze and knows country music history? This is why it’s important for women to tell women’s stories. Anyway, happy for Ella, and everyone else: stop being so fucking weird about women.

Zach Top: A man, with a guitar and a heavy-ass twang, singing about two people having meaningless sex? Yes please! Conway Twitty would be proud of that subject matter (and yes, I know who Conway Twitty is!). I honestly think it’s a little boring and predictable how caught up some folks get in how Top is “leading a traditionalist” movement in country or whatever. I don’t think his success has only to do with some deep traditionalist desire, because there have been plenty of folks before him that have done it with a lot less success. You gotta connect emotionally. There’s something there that pushes beyond machismo with him, even though the way he dresses signals traditional. I’m a fan.

There was no Morgan Wallen: Please know this is not a complaint. And, as I chatted with my friend Hunter Kelly after the show, there are so many parallel worlds of country music right now where Morgan is one of the biggest artists in the world and yet makes no presence at these shows. He doesn’t need it. That says something in and of itself.

Hi, Kaitlin Butts. I loved seeing you crying in the audience. I would like to see you on stage next year!

I’m Just Me: A Charley Pride Celebration of Inclusion was only mentioned by…Bobby Bones? Mickey Guyton hosted her second annual brunch, honoring artists like Lionel Richie, Brittney Spencer, the late Freddy Fender and Shaboozey among others. It would then seem the natural thing would be to integrate this into the show, having Mickey, Brittney, Shaboozey and such sing a medley of Charley Pride hits, especially because the tone of this show (isn’t this the tone of literally all country music shows) was to honor the genre’s storied history? Instead, it got a weird passing mention from Bobby Bones. A couple outlets lauded how we saw so many women on stage at the ACMs. This is true, we did see more than usual. They were all white. We can’t forget that.

Speaking of women - yes, they were there. Yes, the success of Lainey Wilson and Ella Langley is a wonderful thing (and I like them both a lot, this is nowhere near a criticism of them, and to blame one or two women for “taking up space” instead of all of us making more space is a recurrent theme and a real problem). I couldn’t help but be reminded of how to get there, you have to play by the rules (see Maren below, or how folks like Carly Pearce and Kelsea Ballerini seemed to have reached a point where country radio won’t bother). We still only allow one woman at a time, maybe too. They’re all white and straight. Do we want progress for all or some? Side note. In the category of “very arbitrary dates,” my first book, Her Country, turned three this past weekend. That’s not a particularly flashy anniversary or anything, but it is wild to think that it’s been three years since this book came out. More on that another time, maybe, but it’s hard not to reflect on where we have made progress and what the industry choses to flaunt as wins, when we know how few things are actually changing on the charts and in the boardrooms.

Maren is Missing: Because, of course she is. She left the country music industry, with good reason (which has nothing to do with her sound, it drives me nuts how wrong folks got this out of the gate). I think you feel her absence, made all the more striking when she is currently promoting her new album (which I love) and its single, “Too Good,” which sounded just as country-flavored if not more than a lot of the music on that stage. Sigh.

‘Till the next country awards show…probably next week? Who knows.