News

Two-time Academy of Country Music award-winner Carly Pearce has been selected to host the 14th annual ACM Honors at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.

The show will be available on Wednesday, August 25 but will only be livestreamed on Circle Network’s social channels – Circle All Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Circle Network also plans to air a television special at a later date this year, exact schedule to be decided.

Performers on the evening include Lauren Alaina, Devin Dawson, Sara Evans, Hardy, Chris Janson, Lady A. Ashley McBryde, Raelynn, and Lee Ann Womack.

Special Award recipients to be celebrated include Joe Galante and Rascal Flatts (ACM Cliffie Stone Icon Award), Lady A and Ross Copperman (ACM Gary Haber Lifting Lives Award), Luke Combs (ACM Gene Weed Milestone Award), Dan + Shay (ACM Jim Reeves International Award), and Rac Clark (ACM Mae Boren Axton Service Award).

Also, Toby Keith (ACM Merle Haggard Spirit Award), Loretta Lynn,...

The Academy of Country Music has announced the honorees for its special awards and off-camera winners of 2021. The 14th annual ACM Honors will pay tribute to such country artists as Toby Keith, Loretta Lynn, and Luke Combs at an August ceremony in Nashville.

Keith will receive the Merle Haggard Spirit Award, presented to a “singer-songwriter who is continuing the legacy” of Haggard by “following his/her own path, crafting great songs and epitomizing Merle’s spirit through genuine performances and great storytelling.” Past recipients include Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley.

The Flaming Lips offer their own unique spin on George Jones’ signature song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” for the new film Arkansas. A dark-comedy tale about drug trafficking in the South, the movie stars Vince Vaughn, Liam Hemsworth, and Clark Duke, and premieres May 5th on Apple, Amazon, On Demand platforms, and Blu-Ray and DVD.

The Lips’ version of “He Stopped Loving Her Today” arrives with the band performing the song onstage in a scene from the movie, with singer Wayne Coyne — in an eye patch — diving headlong into...

In June 1964, a country music fan in Jamaica who regularly listened to Nashville’s 50,000-watt radio station Wsm sent a letter to the editor of Billboard, who proclaimed it the first such correspondence they had ever received from someone tuning into the country station from the Caribbean island nation. Yet with two Tennessee stations carrying a powerful clear-channel signal over thousands of miles — the other being Nashville’s Wlac, which programmed country music mainly on Saturdays in the early Forties — the hillbilly and early Countrypolitan sounds most associated with Music City had been available to,...

In 1968, Tammy Wynette recorded one of her signature songs, the Bobby Braddock-Curly Putman classic, “D-i-v-o-r-c-e.” Serving as the title tune from Wynette’s third solo LP, the single — as well as the album — topped the charts, and would prove prophetic as Wynette’s second husband, songwriter Don Chapel, filed for divorce from the singer in October 1968.

While Wynette’s subsequent albums, beginning with 1969’s Stand By Your Man, would often feature her songwriting efforts, D-i-v-o-r-c-e consisted of several contemporary cover songs, including an “answer” version to the Bobby Goldsboro crossover hit “Honey,...

“This dumb blonde ain’t nobody’s fool,” sing Dolly Parton and Miranda Lambert on an updated version of Parton’s 1967 offering “Dumb Blonde.” The country vocalists team up to harmonize on the song for the soundtrack to Dumplin‘, the new Netflix film about a Parton-obsessed teenager.

Written by Curly Putman, “Dumb Blonde” was the lead-off song of Parton’s debut album, Hello, I’m Dolly, released via Monument Records. A cheeky proclamation of independence, the song finds Parton and Lambert proving to the man who left them that they...