MARIO ANZUONI
When the CMT Music Awards announced that country star Kelsea Ballerini would be hosting this year’s ceremony, no one had a reason to believe that viewers would be in for anything that wasn’t par for the course. Ballerini has hosted the show for the past two years. She’s a staple in the modern country music scene, and in a genre that has largely been a bastion from polarizing social commentary, she’s become a relatively safe choice for these kinds of gigs.
But after Sunday night’s ceremony, Ballerini is decidedly off the “safe list.” In a one, two punch, Ballerini called for gun reform in front of country music’s biggest stars and then later performed alongside drag queens amid a slew of anti-drag legislation sweeping across the country. It’s the kind of move that leaves some country fans livid, declaring Ballerini as some kind of “woke” traitor of the genre. Truth is? Last night was the most country Kelsea Ballerini has ever been.
Opening the CMT Music Awards last night, Ballerini began with a sobering acknowledgement of the deaths of three nine year olds and three adults following last week’s mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville. While it’s not the first time that an awards show addressed gun violence that hits close to home (CMA Awards host Brad Paisley was particularly vocal following the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival), Ballerini’s tearful plea for reform came from a deeply personal place. Holding back tears, she reflected on her own memory of a 2008 school shooter who killed a student at her high school in Knoxville, Tennessee—just three hours away from Nashville.