Country music fans around the world tune in the listen and watch the CMAs each year! The CMA Awards (Country Music Association Awards) are a chance for the best country songs and artists to get the recognition they deserve.
In a time as crazy as 2020, we could all use a little more country music in our lives.
The nostalgia and comforting feeling of country music have never been more important! We all need something to lift us and remind us that we can be and do better – that’s what makes country music so awesome. At the CMA Awards this year, we got quite a good reminder of music’s place in our culture.
The event was hosted by Reba McEntire and Darius Rucker – country music legends.
Reba and Darius are respective icons in their field. If you haven’t listened to their stuff, your car ride to work tomorrow is the perfect opportunity for a good listen! Reba and Darius were asked to host the CMA Awards, as well as one of the featured songs for the night.
Instead of performing a country classic, the two performed something that speaks to the times.
Music speaks to the heart in a way that words alone don’t. Combine it with a story, and you have something that can change the heart of a nation. When Reba and Darius performed a famous song, it reminded millions of the work that we still need to do.
Mac Davis wrote a song called “In the Ghetto” for Elvis, and it soon became a hit.
The song came about when Davis wanted to express his frustration with the way his black childhood friend lived and how it was different than his own living standard. In an interview with Tennessean, he said:
I grew up with a little kid whose daddy worked with my daddy, and he was a black kid. We were good buddies, 5 or 6 years old. I remember him being one of my best buddies. But he lived in a part of town, and I couldn’t figure out why they had to live where they lived, and we got to live where we lived. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we didn’t have broken bottles every six inches. It was a dirt street ghetto where he lived.
Now, in a time of cultural unrest and a feeling of growing inequality, the words penned by Davis still ring true.
McEntire and Rucker decided to cover the song for the CMA Awards, and the result was a touching moment of self-reflection. With the lyrics:
People, don’t you understand? The child needs a helping hand or he’ll grow to be an angry young man some day. Take a look at you and me, or are we too bright-eyed to see or do we simple turn our heads and look the other way?
A gentle rebuke when we all know that people deserve better.
There are things that need to be fixed in our country and the world. It’s in songs like this that we get a gentle rebuke and a reminder that the privilege of the few can be used for the good of the many. If someone simply told us that to our faces, it stings. In a song, however, we can receive it with a little bit more grace. A duet between Rucker and McEntire seems to be the “spoonful of sugar” that helps the medicine go down. Even more, it was a beautiful tribute to a friend of country music, Mac Davis.
Check out the video below to see the duet for yourself!
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