The 56th annual CMA Awards event will be presented Wednesday night, and awards week began in Music City on Sunday night.
The SESAC Performing Rights Organization honored the people behind some of the biggest songs in the business with their yearly awards. For the first time in three years, the ceremony recognizing the writers and music publishers of the most popular country and Americana songs of the year took place in person at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The night’s opening performance of “Soul,” a recently certified gold hit, was given by Lee Brice and Blanco Brown.
Josh Jenkins won the largest prize of the evening as SESAC’s Songwriter of the Year, thanks to the Luke Bryan-featuring song “Buy Dirt.” Two CMA Awards, including Song of the Year, are also being considered for “Buy Dirt.”
“I believe it is a particularly special song for us. We just wrote a song about what we love as we were sitting around chatting about our families and our beliefs during a COVID retreat. It has therefore been really special for that to take on the life it has to be up for the ACM, NSAI, and then obviously the CMA’s this week, said Josh Jenkins’ brother Matt Jenkins to News 2 before they took the stage to perform the hit.
Even though the CMA Awards are “country music’s biggest night,” events like this actually represent the lifeblood of Music City.
“The world’s best songwriters are present, and many superstars wouldn’t be stars without the songwriters, so I believe it is crucial that we hold these events in their honor. The songwriter of Keith Urban’s “Wild Hearts,” Jennifer Wayne of Runaway Jane, said, “I get more star-struck at the songwriters’ awards than I do at the artists’ awards.
On the red carpet, current CMA Musician of the Year nominee Jenee Fleenor discussed the value of lyrics, saying, “I always say as a musician in the studio, the lyrics really tell me what to play and I’m also a songwriter and it’s such an important part of this industry, so it’s just awesome they honor the songwriters.”