Don’t be surprised if social media turns on Chris Stapleton if he wins an award at the CMAs.
The 2025 CMA Awards are coming up this week on Wednesday, November 19. The annual show, which takes place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, will be hosted by Lainey Wilson this year. She’s going solo, and it’ll be her first time doing so after she helped Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning co-host last year.
And all of the biggest names in country music will be there, including the great Chris Stapleton. Despite his last album release being in November of 2023 (Higher), the 47-year-old finds himself up for three of the bigger awards at the 2025 CMAs. He’s nominated for Entertainer of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year.
Here are the other nominees for those categories:
Entertainer of the Year
- Morgan Wallen
- Luke Combs
- Lainey Wilson
- Cody Johnson
- Chris Stapleton
Male Vocalist of the Year
- Chris Stapleton
- Morgan Wallen
- Luke Combs
- Cody Johnson
- Zach Top
Music Video of the Year
- “Am I Okay?” – Megan Moroney
- Directors: Alexander Gavillet, Megan Moroney
- “I’m Gonna Love You” – Cody Johnson & Carrie Underwood
- Director: Dustin Haney
- “Somewhere Over Laredo” – Lainey Wilson
- Director: TK McKamy
- “Think I’m In Love With You” – Chris Stapleton
- Director: Running Bear
- “You Look Like You Love Me” – Ella Langley & Riley Green
- Directors: Ella Langley, John Park, Wales Toney
Now if you ask me, Chris Stapleton is the default award winner for any and every category, but especially for Male Vocalist of the Year. The man has a set of pipes like no other, and his talent seems effortless. To borrow from the great Anchorman franchise, 80% of time, Stapleton is the right choice, every time. Chris has won the award 4 years in a row, and 8 of the last 10 years.
That being said, this is the 2025 CMA Awards. The only things he released in 2025 was “Bad As I Used To Be” within the F1 movie soundtrack and the duet “A Song To Sing” with Miranda Lambert. Then in 2024, the only thing he released was his live performance with Dua Lipa at last year’s ACM Awards. In Stapleton’s defense, he did go out on his All-American Road Show tour, and played a couple of stadium headlining shows with George Strait.
It was earlier this year at the 2025 ACM Awards that social media started turning on Stapleton when he won the “Male Artist of the Year” award. At the time, people argued that Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen deserved the award more than Stapleton based on criteria, and they may have been right in saying so.
While most people assume “Male Vocalist of the Year” means “pick the best male singer,” the award also takes into account the overall contribution to country music in the previous year. The full definition from the CMAs is as follows:
“This Award goes to the artist. The Award is based on individual musical performance on a solo Country single or album release, as well as the overall contribution to Country Music.”
And yeah, on pure vocal performance Chris wins every time, but should that be enough to beat out what Morgan Wallen has done this year, his global contribution to country music? Or what Zach Top has done for the genre, single-handedly accomplished bringing neotraditional sound back to the mainstream in the “Male Vocalist of the Year” category? Chris will always be the safe and non-controversial choice, but it’s hard to argue that he’s really winning the “overall contribution” aspect with that some of these others are doing
The CMAs are really stuck between a rock and a hard place. They wouldn’t be wrong to hand over any award to Chris Stapleton. Like I stated earlier, he’s such a talented artist that it would totally make sense for him to take home any of the three things he’s nominated for. However, there’s an opportunity cost to all of it… if you give it to Stapleton, you effectively take it away from arguably more deserving artists like Luke Combs or Morgan Wallen who are international touring machines, and Zach Top or Cody Johnson, who are changing the direction of the genre.
Here I was thinking that everyone loved Chris Stapleton, and that him winning would be a no harm, no foul situation. But after the last couple of country music awards shows, I’ve discovered that I’m wrong in believing that. There is definitely a certain sense of burn-out when it comes to award shows… but should that be Chris Stapleton’s problem?
The #CMAawards Male Vocalist of the Year nominees are …
✨@LukeCombs
✨@CodyJohnson
✨@ChrisStapleton
✨@ZachTopMusic
✨@MorganWallen pic.twitter.com/NxZdL14THP— CMA Country Music (@CountryMusic) September 8, 2025
