Simply iconic.
The 59th Annual CMA Awards show is tonight at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, and will be hosted by Lainey Wilson, and the ladies in country music are leading the nominations as Lainey, Ella Langley and Megan Moroney with six each.
They’re all performing as well, and in honor of the big day, I want to throw it back to one of country music’s other leading ladies in Shania Twain, who stole the show in 1995 with her performance of her hit “Any Man Of Mine.”
The pop country queen made sure to stop and see some of the biggest names in country music on her way up to the stage, sitting on the laps of Tim McGraw (pre-Faith Hill), Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart (who seemed to enjoy it more than any of the other guys), as well as flirting with John Michael Montgomery, Tracy Lawrence and the one and only Johnny Cash in the process, as well.
At this show, the song and video were both nominated for awards, and Shania was up for the Horizon Award (now New Artist of the Year), against David Ball, Johnny Berry, Faith Hill and Alison Krauss, which ultimately went to Krauss.
Of course, during Shania’s flirty performance, most of the guys seemed to at least get the humor of it and laughed it off (duh), even if they might’ve been a little uncomfortable, though I have a sneaking suspicion that they probably didn’t have any real problem with it at all.
For me, when Shania walked up and tousled the hair of the Man in Black himself, Johnny Cash, I was truly inspired by her boldness and complete unabashed confidence… like, that’s something I can’t imagine any other young female artist doing, especially in this type of setting on national TV, and I love it. We can all learn something from that.
It was certainly a daring choice from a young lady who’d already been receiving her fair share of criticism leading up to the show because of her musical style, and she was way ahead of her time, and that is quite obvious just from this whole video alone. The amount of guts this really took can’t be understated, and her unapologetic nature shines, and it’s safe to say now that the decision to go all the way there with it paid off… because we’re still talking about it 30 years later.
It’s a supremely underrated performance in my humble opinion, and they don’t, and will never, do performances like this anymore… these really were the glory days.
Honestly, only Shania could pull something like this off, and if you’ve never seen it before, today is your lucky day:
The 59th Annual CMA Awards will air live tonight from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena at 8PM ET on ABC, hosted by Lainey Wilson.
“Any Man Of Mine”
