Country superstar Garth Brooks announced Wednesday that he is seeking to withdraw from the CMA Awards’ first prize at the CMA Awards, which he won in November for the seventh time, and said it’s time to let a new generation take the honor .
At a press conference held through Zoom, Brooks told reporters that he was aware of a backlash after winning first prize last November for the third time in four years. Instead of making an exception, he said that one tweet he saw in particular stayed with him and convinced him that he should bow out of consideration. “For eight months, it has bothered me,” he admitted, saying he now has a “feeling of freedom” in withdrawing from eligibility, or trying to do so.
“You guys saw what happened after the CMAs throughout the new year,” Brooks told a dozen reporters who called. “And he got a little … I don’t know, it wasn’t fun. Let’s say it like that, okay? And at my age, what I do is fun stuff. But there was a tweet there that really stuck in my head, who said, ‘Hey, man, why don’t you quit and only have the artist for the next generation?’ One hundred percent agreed. One hundred percent agreed, “he repeated.” So, with all the love in the world, all the thanks, because the last thing I wanted to do is look ungrateful to the CMAs and everyone who voted for us, We’re officially retiring Artist of the Year. And my (lucky) number is 7. You know it … It’s time for someone else to win that award, know how it feels (to be) that (winning) artist, because everyone they’re breaking their butts. “
Brooks said he has had discussions about this with the Country Music Association since the beginning of the year, and suggested that there be some sort of “emeritus” proclamation to remove him from eligibility. But he says he was told he cannot unilaterally withdraw if the members still want to nominate him. A reduced ballot is mailed to voters on Friday, and Brooks said he’s still trying to get it removed so that one more artist can slide to where it would have taken. But if he is not successful at that, he added, he will only trust CMA voters to honor his request by not casting votes for him in this final preliminary round.
The conversation he had with the CMA, he said, was to see “if we could establish some kind of artist emeritus of the year.” And they were very sweet to entertain that thought. So they had meetings, and we were supposed to announce at the CMA Music Fest ”that he was pulling out of the race. “Of course, with the Covid, that (festival) was also rejected. And they came back and said, ‘Hey look, as much as we’d love to help you with this, we can’t determine which artist is up for what award.’ And I totally understand it. They tried very hard. And so when we told them that we were going to have this press conference, they came back and had another meeting, very nice of them to go through all this, and they just came back and said, ‘It’s not our decision. We can’t get you out of an award. So today we sit here and humbly ask, with all the thanks and love in the world, that we will do it ourselves. We are going to be the artist of the year. “
Brooks added that he’s fine with any other CMA award, and actually hopes to win the video of the year for “Dive Bar,” his duet with Blake Shelton. “That would be a fun night. Make no mistake, I am very competitive and these awards mean a lot to me, ”he said. “It’s just that with the artist, we’ve been fortunate enough to take him home multiple times and feel like it’s someone else’s turn.”
Brooks also noted that the suspense of waiting for the artist award at the end of a three-hour ceremony makes the event less fun, and he hopes to relax more in future iterations of the show, as “I get to take the woman’s hand more beautiful in the world “, his wife, Trisha Yearwood.
A journalist, Becca Walls, pointed out to Brooks that last year she gasped in the press room when her name was announced, but it wasn’t because someone had an enemy against Brooks for winning it again: she had more to do, she said, with the fact that there was a backlog of advertising in the 2019 broadcast representing “the year of the woman” in the country, and there had been an expectation that the lone candidate, Carrie Underwood, whom many consider long ago, Could have brought honor.
Brooks replied that he was aware of the sentiment in favor of Underwood, who he acknowledged in the press room that night, and said he hopes she will receive it for years to come. “I hope to give Carrie a big standing ovation,” Brooks said.
But he also admitted that it can be difficult for voters to determine who to award the artist with, an honor that traditionally resembles the “top touring attraction of the year” more than anything based on the achievement of the recording, when the concert has become completely dark.
“This is probably the perfect year,” he said, referring to retiring, “because I don’t know how the artist will be judged this year.”
Brooks has not been idle during national blockades (he filmed a concert with his band that went to hundreds of drive-ins), but said the quarantine has extended his relationship with Yearwood.
“You sure are going to find out a lot about the person you are with,” he said. “And I and Miss Yearwood, I don’t know why we do this, maybe because we are both alphas … (but) we decided to use quarantine to face everything, because now you can’t leave, you can’t leave … This It’s probably been the most we’ve been through as a couple. But what’s on the other side is so cool, especially when you’re with the right one… The more you meet someone you are already in love with, the more you love them. That makes me a man. Lucky. He added: “Trisha Yearwood could be the sweetest person on the planet, so if Trisha wants to kill you, you must work on yourself. That is something I have learned from. But she has a sweet feeling of letting you discover it yourself.
On the live front, Brooks has engaged in an intermittent stadium tour that started in 2019 and still hopes to wrap up in the summer of 2022, though that depends on rescheduling some dates he has already missed. . After that, he will continue touring, but possibly on a different scale. When asked if he thinks the arena dates may have to replace the stadium dates next year or the following year, he considered the possibility: “I want to play no matter what I do. I want to play. If it’s five people, if it’s 5 million, I don’t care. I just want to play. So I had never thought about that, but I can’t imagine leaving 10,000 people sitting next to each other and not 80,000. But if that’s the rule, then you can bet we’re going to figure out how to get into that game, because it means you can play live music for people. “
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