Texas-based lovers of country music can count on one thing for sure these days: the reigning holy trinity of Lone Star female talent — Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Miranda Lambert — and their ability to turn a country music awards program into a showcase of their rightful dominance within the genre.
All three ladies with North Texas ties have been nominated for the Female Video of the Year trophy at this year's CMT Awards. Musgraves is being recognized for Space Cowboy, Lambert for Keeper of the Flame and Morris for Girl. Musgraves has already won a few major prizes for Space Cowboy including the 2019 Grammy for Best Country Song, while Morris' latest album, on which Girl is the title track, set all sorts of streaming records upon its release earlier this year.
Lambert is also in the running for Collaborative Video of the Year with her Jason Aldean duet Drowns the Whiskey, which, for our money, is one of the two or three decent songs the Georgia country-rocker has offered over the past few years. And yes, we're saying that Lambert's participation on the song probably helped it get there.
For the night's biggest award, Video of the Year, Musgraves is nominated for Rainbow and Morris is in the running again for Girl. It's a good bet that Morris, an Arlington native, will choose that song to sing when it's her turn to perform live on the broadcast.
As impressive a showing as this Texas trio is making on the list of CMT hopefuls, their presence is hardly surprising. Miranda, Maren and Musgraves were all nominated in the Female Vocalist of the Year category at the most recent CMA Awards in November 2018 and at this past April's ACM Awards, where Musgraves took home the prize.
Not to be forgotten are some of the D-FW men who have found their way onto the CMT list, too. One unexpected contender, Denton-born-and-bred Eli Young Band, is nominated in the Group Video of the Year category for Love Ain't, the song with which the veteran group finally returned to the top of a country singles chart. It hit No. 1 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart on May 21.
Although Leon Bridges is no stranger to award shows in his still-young career, country prizes aren't something he's so familiar with. The Grammy-nominated, Fort Worth soul man is up for CMT Performance of the Year thanks to Beautiful Crazy, a duet he performed with country's top young male superstar Luke Combs during a 2018 episode of the channel's CMT Crossroads series.
Details
The CMT Music Awards airs live at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 5.