Country stars Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris lead CMT Music Awards nominations
Online voting has opened for the public to pick their preferred winners of the 2021 edition of the CMT Music Awards.
Former tourmates Miranda Lambert and Maren Morris are the leading nominees for the 2021 CMT Music Awards, celebrating the best in country music videos.
CMT has announced the nominees for its June 9 fan-voted awards show, where Morris and Lambert both have two nominations in the top category of video of the year, which has 14 contenders.
They are also nominated for female video of the year and collaborative video of the year.
Morris shares two nominations with her husband and fellow singer Ryan Hurd, a first-time CMT nominee, on their duet Chasing After You.
Lambert shares two of her nominations with another former tourmate, rocker Elle King, on their rowdy drinking song Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home).
Lambert, Morris and King all toured together in 2019 as a part of Lambert’s all-female line-up on the Pink Guitars and Roadside Bars tour.
Other nominees include this year’s show hosts Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini, with three nods each, including bids for video of the year. Little Big Town and Mickey Guyton are also up for three awards.
One of the genre’s top stars, Morgan Wallen, did not pick up any nominations. The chart-topping singer was caught on camera using a racial slur earlier this year and as a result, CMT removed his videos from its programming.
“After removing Morgan Wallen from our platforms earlier this year, his videos were deemed ineligible for the 2021 CMT Music Awards,” CMT said in a statement.
Though his videos were removed and he was not allowed to compete at last month’s Academy of Country Music Awards, Wallen has still had major success on the pop and country charts, earning six nominations for the 2021 Billboard Music Awards later this month.
In a normal year he would have been a shoo-in for CMT’s video of the year prize.
The finalists for that category will be determined in two rounds with the top five nominees announced on June 1 and the top three on June 8, the day before the show is broadcast.
Other nominees for video of the year include Kenny Chesney, Sam Hunt, Keith Urban, Ingrid Andress and Carrie Underwood, the most decorated winner in the history of the CMT Music Awards with 22 wins. She is nominated twice this year thanks to Hallelujah, her duet with John Legend.
As usual, the show’s nominees are heavy with genre-blending collaborations. Urban and Pink are nominated twice for One Too Many and Jimmie Allen and Noah Cyrus are nominated for This Is Us.
In the CMT performance of the year category, Nathaniel Rateliff and Margo Price are nominated for Twinkle, Twinkle, while Ballerini is nominated for The Other Girl, her duet with pop singer Halsey.
This is Brown’s second consecutive year hosting the awards, and Ballerini’s first.
Performers are yet to be announced but the show’s producers said the night will include “outdoor performances, cross-genre collaborations and a few surprises”.
Fans can visit vote.cmt.com to vote for their favourite videos.
