Welcome back to Country Music 4 Ever! This past Wednesday was the CMA Awards. Lainey Wilson received a lot of praise for her incredible job hosting the show. She also took home awards for “Album of the Year,” “Female Vocalist of the Year,” and “Entertainer of the Year.” Other big winners include Cody Johnson, Ella Langley, and Riley Green.

Regardless of how good the show was, there has been a lot of controversy involving a certain artist who did not attend the award ceremony.

Morgan Wallen did not attend the CMAs and has not given a reason why. This is not the first time he’s skipped out on the CMAs. Last year he took home the biggest award of the night, “Entertainer of the Year.” However, he was not in attendance at last year’s ceremony either.

The question is, if an artist is nominated for an award, should they make it a point to be there in person to at least act like they care?

This could go both ways. On one hand, it makes you look good if you show up for industry events like the CMAs. I feel the industry insiders as well as country music fans will respect you more if you try to be there. On the other hand, if you don’t show up, fans are still going to sell out your shows and buy your music because award shows don’t mean that much to fans that they will stop supporting you if you don’t attend. Also, whether you show up to industry events or not does not change the amount of money you have coming in. So artists don’t really have to take time out of their busy schedules to make it look like they care if they honestly don’t.

The difference is, some artists care so much about the country genre because they spent their entire lives loving the music by all the artists who came before them, and they gave everything they had to chase a dream of being just like their musical heroes, so any chance they get to be a part of something like the CMA Awards, they will be there in a heartbeat.

I’m not trying to make Morgan out to be the bad guy. He’s not the first artist to skip an award show, and he won’t be the last. He wasn’t even the only artist this year to skip out, but it makes you wonder how invested some people are in the genre they devoted their lives to.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back soon!