Should Morgan Wallen Have Won 2024 CMA Entertainer of the Year?

Well, there you have it, folks - Morgan Wallen is officially the 2024 CMA Entertainer of the Year.

Despite presenter Jeff Bridges’ best attempts to (unintentionally) undercut the gravity of the situation by mispronouncing Morgan Wallen's last name, there's no mistaking the fact that Morgan's long-awaited triumph marked a seismic moment for country music.

The ‘Thought You Should Know’ maverick's relationship with the CMA Awards has always been fraught, with the CMA seemingly shutting him out after his 2021 racial slur incident.

However, as Morgan Wallen has transcended Nashville and exploded into one of the biggest stars on the planet, the CMA was faced with a dilemma: continue their hard-line stance and keep pretending as though Morgan doesn't exist, or take the accusations of hypocrisy on the chin and welcome him back in from the cold with open arms.

At the 2023 CMA Awards, the foundations were tentatively laid for Morgan's return, but country music's governing body ended up caught in No Man's Land. They sought the boosted viewership that Morgan Wallen's double-header of performances would bring, but didn't want to go so far as giving him an award, despite heading into the Entertainer of the Year contest as a virtually unanimous favourite.

This year, as Musical Event of the Year, Song of the Year, Single of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year and Music Video of the Year categories all passed by without any hint that Morgan Wallen's nominations were anything more than token gestures, the CMA voters stunned everyone by giving Morgan the most coveted gong of the night: Entertainer of the Year. The Sneedville native didn't even bother showing up, with the general assumption being that his alleged chair-throwing incident back in April would be used by CMA members as a reason to snub him yet again.

But no, the CMA surprised fans by opting for the risky choice over alternatives that might typically be deemed ‘safer’ for their brand. Generally, the response has been positive, with numerous country aficionados celebrating how Morgan Wallen has finally been given the credit for the ground-breaking waves he's been making in the genre. On the flip-side, some are expressing concerns related to the role of each year's reigning Entertainer of the Year as a leader and pillar of the country music community, bearing in mind Morgan's somewhat checkered past.

So today, as Luke Combs combs back through old CMA footage to investigate whether Chris Stapleton really has won eight - eight?! - Male Vocalist of the Year awards, and as George Strait tries to recover from his new recurring nightmare of being forced to watch Shaboozey perform ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ on a loop, the question that hangs pregnantly in the air above the post-CMA Awards dust cloud is simple: should Morgan Wallen have won the 2024 CMA Entertainer of the Year?

In a word: yes.

If you take away all the baggage that inevitably surrounds Morgan Wallen, and look at this as a match-up based purely on performance, there's no denying that Morgan is streaks ahead of the other artists that were nominated for 2024 Entertainer of the Year.

A quick glance at the monthly Spotify streaming numbers, for instance, speaks volumes. At the time of writing, Morgan Wallen sits at 36.2 million. The closest competitor from the 2024 Entertainer of the Year pool is Luke Combs on 25.6 million, with Chris Stapleton sat on 20.7 million. Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson notch 17.7 million and 9.4 million respectively. Even Zach Bryan, who is widely considered Morgan's closest competition for the mantel of today's biggest country artist, tallies 29.4 million, while Shaboozey, interestingly, racks up a respectable 27. 1 million, outpacing every other Entertainer of the Year nominee apart from Morgan.

Of course, Spotify streams are not the be-all-and-end-all, as it wouldn't really make sense for Shaboozey to have received an Entertainer of the Year nod in these early stages of his career.

But these figures amount to just one piece of the broader puzzle. Until Shaboozey went on his spectacular run atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’, no other country artist had spent more time at the peak of the all-genre charts than Morgan Wallen over the past 12 months. Bearing in mind the CMA Awards eligibility period spans from July 1st, 2023 to June 30th, 2024, Morgan Wallen's latest Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper, ‘Love Somebody’, is not taken into account.

But even so, Morgan's historic 16-week Hot 100 reign in 2023 with ‘Last Night’ earned him Billboard's Top Song of 2023. During the 2023 Billboard Music Awards - which are based solely on chart data - Morgan Wallen picked up more gongs than any other artist, securing 11 in total, including Top Billboard 200 Album for One Thing At A Time, which broke Garth Brooks’ record for the most weeks spent at No. 1.

Even if we narrow the perimeters to country music alone, Morgan Wallen has been the artist for over two years now. In October, he wrapped the highest selling country tour in history, shortly before setting a new Country Radio record by earning his fifth No. 1 in the space of a year with the brooding ‘Lies, Lies, Lies’.

Morgan Wallen now stands as one of the most popular artists across the world, with the ‘Last Night’ hitmaker headlining the biggest UK country concert of its kind at BST Hyde Park 2024 in July this year, as well as going on his first arena run across Europe.

Granted, these last two feats fall outside the CMA Awards eligibility window, so in theory, they aren't supposed to be taken into account. They nonetheless highlight how Morgan Wallen has graduated from country prodigy into crossover titan, on a scale that we haven't seen since the golden years of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain.

And when you think of it like that, how could the CMA do anything but make Morgan Wallen Entertainer of the Year?

The argument against this, however, zeroes in on a specific portion of the CMA's Entertainer of the Year criteria, which proclaims that the winner must give consideration to the candidate's “leadership and overall contribution to country music”.

It could be posited that Morgan Wallen does not compare to the likes of Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson when it comes to being a leader in the country music space. Some sections of the community still feel Morgan has not sufficiently atoned for his racial slur incident in 2021, and nod to his 2024 chair-throwing incident as further proof that he has not yet done enough to shake off his label as country music's bad boy.

It's true that, when compared to Jelly Roll, who carries out a dizzyingly long list of endeavours geared towards helping those struggling with addiction, including testifying at a Senate hearing on the fentanyl crisis and donating funds to a plethora of charities, Morgan Wallen perhaps isn't actively positioning himself as a ‘leader’ in the way Jelly is. Similarly, despite facing a deafening chorus of criticism and disdain after her unexpected 2023 Entertainer of the Year victory, Lainey Wilson has carried the title with grace and purpose, with Lainey being ubiquitous - some argue too ubiquitous - in the country music world.

Yet, as tempting as it can be to get lost in the weeds of the CMA's criteria and quibble over the subtleties of each specific guideline, in reality, the Entertainer of the Year crown has always been given to the act deemed to be the biggest country artist at the time. It's the most prestigious CMA award for a reason - it's never really been about how good of a literal ‘entertainer’ the artist is, it's more an annual assessment of who's been dominating country music more than anyone else.

And there's no question that the answer to that question is Morgan Wallen. He remains a controversial figure for many, but for the CMA to continue ignoring him would have been ludicrous. In 2024, whether they like it or not, Morgan Wallen is the face of country music, both in the US and globally - and it's about time they recognised that.

The CMA will get some stick. But overall, donning Morgan Wallen the 2024 Entertainer of the Year makes the awards ceremony feel more relevant and on-the-pulse than it has in years.

For more on Morgan Wallen, see below: