The first CMA Music Festival of Donald Trump’s second presidency arrives with a lineup seemingly engineered to avoid controversy. Many of country music’s current megastars are skipping the event altogether. Reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year and cultural lightning rod Morgan Wallen won’t be there to sing his toxic, blame-shifting No. 1 hit “I’m the Problem.” Wallen’s frequent collaborators Post Malone, HARDY and ERNEST are also MIA. Luke Combs is playing Bonnaroo instead of CMA Fest this year, and Lainey Wilson isn’t on the bill either. Rapper turned country star Jelly Roll is missing from the lineup. Warren Zeiders picked up a ringing endorsement from Trump. Zeiders is not playing an official festival event, but will be performing right in the thick of the action on Broadway, as part of the annual Spotify House pop-up at Blake Shelton-affiliated honky-tonk Ole Red.
Of course, this is country music, so a little MAGA cheerleading should be expected at CMA Fest — especially from Mar-a-Lago regular Jason Aldean, who headlines opening night Thursday at the Nissan Stadium Main Stage. Aldean recently shared how happy he is with Trump 2.0, and he’ll get absolutely no pushback should he double down on those views from the stage while introducing his culture-war anthem “Try That in a Small Town” or his latest paint-by-numbers chart-topper “Whiskey Drink.”
Further down the bill, CMA Fest is still presenting a few Black, Latino, Indigenous and queer acts, but there have been some notable changes made in how those acts are booked. The results seem to indicate that marginalized folks will have to check their full identity at the door if they aren’t publicly riding the Trump train — if they make it onto the official CMA Fest lineup at all.
To understand why these shifts matter — even in today’s anti-DEI climate — let’s first go back to 2022’s CMA Fest. After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the event re-emerged that year with an infusion of progressive programming. Those selections took the form of showcases curated by Nashville-based grassroots organizations like Black Opry — a collective of Black artists, fans and industry professionals making country music — and RNBW Queer Music Collective, which hosts weekly LGBTQ artist showcases at East Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and developed a showcase called Country Proud. These partnerships continued in 2023 and 2024, and last year’s addition of Rissi Palmer’s Color Me Country showcase offered even more opportunities for Black, Indigenous and Latino artists to show up fully and unapologetically.
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This all dovetailed with recent events that were heralded as groundbreaking, game-changing shifts toward inclusion in country music. In 2021, Brothers Osborne’s T.J. Osborne came out in the pages of Time. Last year, Beyoncé released her country opus Cowboy Carter, which produced her No. 1 country hit “Texas Hold ’Em” and ultimately claimed the Grammys for Best Country Album and Album of the Year — despite not getting a nomination for a single CMA Award.
Unfortunately, Brothers Osborne are also only appearing at the Spotify House pop-up this year, leaving exactly zero openly queer acts sharing the Nissan Stadium stage with Jason Aldean. And while it will be a cold day in hell before Beyoncé plays another CMA event, Black country star Shaboozey — who was featured on Cowboy Carter, went on to score the No. 1 country song of 2024 with “Tipsy (A Bar Song)” and rightfully side-eyed the notion that the Carter Family invented country music during the recent Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony — will be back for his second year at CMA Fest, taking the Main Stage at Nissan Stadium on Friday night. Besides Shaboozey, veteran country artist Darius Rucker is the only Black artist with a full set on that big stage. Other Black Cowboy Carter collaborators like Reyna Roberts, Willie Jones, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy are playing the free daytime stages at CMA Fest, though.
Black Opry teamed up with RNBW for another independent event called Building Bridges, set to precede the fest on June 4 over at the Virgin Hotel on the edge of Music Row; the lineup included Adam Mac, Carmen Dianne and others. As of this writing, there are no plans for a Color Me Country showcase this year. The festival has quietly stripped these instances of free, community-based programming on the official lineup in favor of two panels taking place back-to-back Saturday inside the ticketed Fan Fair X exhibition at the Music City Center. The result is a mixed bag that still platforms many deserving artists, but ultimately falls short of maintaining the same level of high-profile representation for marginalized groups seen in previous years.
Speaking with the stellar songsmith about her work, her upcoming CMA Fest performances and uplifting queer and Latino communities
The first panel — Latino Trailblazers in Country, presented by the Country Latin Association, happening at 1:45 p.m. Saturday and hosted by Rolling Stone’s Tomás Mier — features Kat Luna, Los Hermanos Mendoza, MÕRIAH and Grammy-winning Música Mexicana star Carín León. León, who just played for 70,000 fans at the Houston Rodeo following performances at Stagecoach and the Grand Ole Opry, will also join MAGA-coded country star Cody Johnson onstage at Nissan Stadium Friday night to sing their collaboration, “She Hurts Like Tequila.” At a time when ICE agents’ federal immigration sweeps are terrorizing Nashville and elsewhere, this prominent platforming of Latin artists is a welcome move. Just don’t expect any mention of Trump’s harsh immigration policies during the panel.
The second panel, Rooted at CMA Fest at 2:45 p.m. Saturday, is hosted by Origins Music Group and features Black artists The War and Treaty, RVSHVD and Coffey Anderson. Notably, Anderson also shared a stage with the likes of Kari Lake, Roger Stone and President Trump himself at the 1775 Gala celebrating Trump’s inauguration in January at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. To be fair, CMA Fest performers including Aldean, Rascal Flatts and Dierks Bentley also sang at events in D.C. that week, but Anderson is the only one on that list who is also a member of a marginalized community. Origins Music Group’s CEO Corey Jones will moderate the panel, and it should be noted Jones is married to CMA senior director of industry relations and inclusion Mia O’Guinn Jones. That connection raises even more questions as to why Origins Music Group, a more Trump-friendly organization, was given a platform this year while LGBTQ inclusive groups like Black Opry and RNBW Collective were not.
In a further hit to LGBTQ representation, the festival is offering no panels or shows designed to replace the RNBW Collective’s Country Proud event. Out of the nearly 300 artists who will perform at an official CMA Fest event, just five are openly queer. El Salvador-born Angie K could have brought a queer point of view to the Latin Trailblazers in Country panel, though she is a co-founder of the Country Latin Association that is organizing it; at least she has an official performance slot at 2:50 p.m. Friday on the Chevy Vibes Stage. (Read more in our interview with Angie K in this issue. She has also been added to Friday’s Spotify House lineup and will perform during the Country con Corazón event Friday night at Plaza Mariachi.) Unfortunately, she’ll be on at the same time outspoken queer country artist Fancy Hagood plays the Good Molecules Reverb Stage. Sam Williams, Ty Herndon and Melody Walker round out the depressingly short list of queer artists performing this year.
Talking with twin brothers and superb country songsmiths Brandon and Derek Campbell about their debut LP
Despite these setbacks with the official CMA Fest lineup, diverse country artists are forging their own path and making their voices heard across Nashville this week. Brittney Spencer, who played the big stage at last year’s CMA Fest, will perform in the round at the FEM Country Showcase at 7:30 p.m. June 5 at City Winery. Black Opry favorites The Kentucky Gentlemen are following up their June 2 appearance at Ty Herndon’s 10th annual Concert for Love and Acceptance with their own album release show June 6 at The Blue Room at Third Man Records; they have also been added to the lineup at Spotify House, and are a part of the National Museum of African American Music's June 6 Been Country: Black Roots and Rhythm event. That NMAAM event will also feature performances from Randy Savvy and the Compton Cowboys and several others, as well as a conversation with The War and Treaty.
As always, the nightly shows at Nissan Stadium will be filmed for an ABC special (airing June 26 and streaming the next day on Hulu), and there are a few artists who’ll be featured on the show fans should look out for. Of course, Shaboozey will be on that big stage along with Ashley McBryde, who remains an envelope-pushing, LGBTQ-affirming breath of fresh air in the country format. As I write this, Megan Moroney and Ella Langley somehow both have solo singles in the country radio top 10 without a male duet partner, which is pretty much a miracle in the male-dominated format. They’ll each be performing twice during the festival. Finally, new traditionalist Zach Top just had his first No. 1 hit with “I Never Lie,” and his album Cold Beer & Country Music bucks the trend of country’s long-running toxic masculinity problem with clever lyrics that actually show some respect for the women in his life. Sadly, that’s something to celebrate in country music circa 2025.
The who, what, where, when and why of CMA Fest and Bonnaroo 2025
