Lainey Wilson, Chris Stapleton, Old Dominion, Little Big Town, and others will also perform at awards show next month
This year’s CMAs will feature a typically stacked lineup of performers. Luke Bryan, Lainey Wilson, and Tanya Tucker, among others, are all set to perform at the awards ceremony, which is at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 8. Those who can’t attend can watch it live on ABC that night at 8 p.m. ET or stream it the next day on Hulu. The show’s producers announced the nominees last month.
Jelly Roll will open the show with his hit, “Need a Favor”; it will be his first time making an appearance at the trophy toss where he could catch up to five of the awards, and he better be prepared since they are shaped like dangerous crystalline missiles. Note: The trophies are 15 inches tall and weigh seven-and-a-half pounds. Other performers include Little Big Town, K. Michelle, Old Dominion, Megan Moroney, Carly Pearce, and Chris Stapleton, who in 2021 managed to hold four of the glassy stalagmites without dropping them.
Bryan — who’s planning a mouthful of a medley that includes “Huntin’, Fishin’ and Lovin’ Every Day,” “One Margarita,” “That’s My Kind of Night,” “Play It Again,” and “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” — will co-host the show alongside omnipresent quarterback Peyton Manning, who hopefully will not try to throw one of the awards. This is the second year Bryan and Manning have hosted the show together.
Duets will largely be the order of the evening. Stapleton will pull double duty, performing his own “White Horses” before joining Wilson — the artist up for the most pointy prizes — on a round of her “Wildflowers and Wild Horses.” Another duet will feature Jelly Roll building a bridge with K. Michelle on a duet of “Love Can Build a Bridge,” and Tucker will join Little Big Town to sing her 51-year-old crossover hit “Delta Dawn.” Moroney and Old Dominion will perform “Can’t Break Up Now,” and Pearce and Stapleton, who don’t seem to be getting much of a breather so far, will perform “We Don’t Fight Anymore.”
The awards show’s producers will announce more performers in the weeks ahead. Stapleton should be standing by.