Taylor Swift returns to the CMA Awards after 13 years, this time as the underdog

Taylor Swift is going back to the stage where country music first crowned her, and she is going back as something she has almost never been in Nashville: the likely loser. The Country Music Association and ABC have confirmed that the pop star will perform at the sixtieth CMA Awards, her first performance at the ceremony since the night she sang “Red” with Alison Krauss and Vince Gill. She arrives with a single nomination, for her Pixar song “I Knew It, I Knew You,” in a race that country critics started handing to Ella Langley the week the nominations came out.

That is the right way to read this return. It is not a coronation, and it is not yet a country comeback. It is a booking that suits everyone in the building. The CMAs get the biggest name in pop for their anniversary broadcast. Swift gets a Nashville stage for a song that is also chasing an Oscar and a Grammy. The trophy, the part of an awards show that is supposed to matter, is the least important thing about her night. The performance is the prize, and the artists who should worry about the scoreboard are country’s own stars.

This matters beyond the fan base. What Swift sings, and whether she wins, will be read as a verdict on whether her country turn is a one-song detour or a door reopening. For country listeners, the question is sharper: the genre is having a record-breaking chart year, and its biggest television night of the year could end up being told through a guest.

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Taylor Swift at the CMA Awards: what was announced, and what was not

The news broke on Good Morning America. As The Tennessean’s Bryan West pointed out, the morning show “airs on the same network broadcasting the CMA Awards,” and the timing on a Friday the 13th suited a singer who considers 13 her lucky number. Billboard reported that the CMAs and ABC made the announcement together. Good Morning America added its own disclosure at the bottom of the story: the Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News, Disney+ and Hulu.

What nobody announced is the set list. Variety noted that Swift had already said she would attend after the nominations came out, but there had been “no indication until now on how or whether she intended on participating in the show beyond being an audience member.” Variety added that no information was given about what she will perform, and called it “a good bet” that the nominated song will be part or all of it. Her own reaction to the nomination, posted on Instagram and reported by American Songwriter and Whiskey Riff, was a joke rather than a plan: “Looks like I haven’t yee’d my last haw.”

One thing has been ruled out. The show will include a tribute to Dolly Parton, who died this summer at 80, and rumors had placed Swift in it. A CMA source told E! News she will not be part of that tribute, and Rolling Stone said it had confirmed the same. Swift dedicated her MTV VMAs Video of the Year win to Parton, calling her “the ultimate showgirl.” Her CMA slot will be her own.

Why “I Knew It, I Knew You” is the underdog in Single of the Year

The Tennessean lists the field: Swift’s song against Langley’s “Be Her” and “Choosin’ Texas,” Lainey Wilson’s “Somewhere Over Laredo” and Cody Johnson’s “The Fall.” Langley is nominated twice in the category and leads the whole ceremony with nine nominations, according to Billboard and Deadline. Single of the Year rewards a record’s year on radio and the charts, and Langley’s year has been historic. “Choosin’ Texas” holds Billboard’s all-time record for weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, a mark it extended this month, as MCM reported.

Swift’s song had a big year too, just a shorter one. According to her label MCA, it debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and spent its first two weeks there, then became her 14th career No. 1 at country radio and her first in 13 years. Whiskey Riff noted that it also spent two weeks atop Hot Country Songs before being “knocked off by Ella’s record-breaking single,” and called Swift a “longshot (which is rare for Taylor).” Saving Country Music was blunter. Its editor, who writes as Trigger, opened his nominations column with “Just give them all to Ella Langley now,” described Swift’s entry as “lackluster” and wrote that “not even the allure of handing Taylor Swift an award at the CMAs again and the ratings spike that might create” would beat Langley’s momentum.

There is a quieter detail in Billboard’s report. Swift, a two-time Entertainer of the Year and still the youngest winner of that prize, as Deadline notes, has never won Single of the Year. Her only previous nomination in the category came in 2013, for “Highway Don’t Care” with Tim McGraw and Keith Urban. An artist with a dozen CMA honors, by The Tennessean’s count, is chasing the one major trophy that has always gone to someone else, against a record-breaking single.

Taylor Swift, ABC and Toy Story 5: one company on both sides of the camera

Follow the song and the broadcast and they meet in the same place. “I Knew It, I Knew You” was written by Swift and Jack Antonoff for Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5, inspired by the character Jessie, and released by Walt Disney Records in association with Republic Records, according to MCA’s announcement of the radio No. 1. The CMA Awards air on ABC and stream on Disney+, with next-day streaming on Hulu. The performance was announced on ABC’s morning show. The ceremony itself is produced by the Country Music Association, with Robert Deaton as executive producer, as Billboard notes, and the CMA chooses its performers.

None of this is improper, and nobody has suggested it is. It does explain why the booking makes sense from every side of the table. Variety reports that the song is being campaigned for an Oscar for best original song and was submitted for song of the year at the Grammys. A prime-time network performance is exactly the exposure an awards campaign wants, and on this night the network, the streaming service, the film and the record label sit inside the same corporate family. Whiskey Riff put the CMA side plainly back in September: organizers would be “doing everything they can to get her to perform on the show for the ratings that she would bring.” Everyone gets something. The only party guaranteed nothing is the nominee most likely to win.

The case that Taylor Swift is coming home to country, and why it runs ahead of the facts

The homecoming reading deserves its strongest form. Saving Country Music called the nomination “yet another piece of evidence that Taylor Swift’s next move very well might be back to quotation mark ‘country,’” and predicted she would perform and “perhaps broadcast her intentions to be more involved in ‘country’ moving forward.” Variety points out that this is her first new song in more than a decade marketed as country to reach No. 1 at country radio. Rolling Stone, recalling her full move to pop with 1989, wrote that “she never closed the door completely.” Weeks ago Brad Paisley inducted her into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, where she credited “the fundamentals and the foundation that I learned here in Nashville.” This year marks two decades since her debut album and her first CMA red carpet. The Guardian, quoted in MCA’s release, praised the song’s “rootsy soul of her country origins.”

The symmetry is tempting. In 2007, The Tennessean recalls, a 17-year-old Swift performed “Our Song” on the same show, won the Horizon Award and told the room, “This is definitely the highlight of my senior year!” Two years later she swept all four categories she was nominated in and became the youngest Entertainer of the Year. A return on the twentieth anniversary of all that writes its own headline.

It runs ahead of the evidence. The song that put her back on country radio was commissioned for an animated film about a cowgirl toy, not released as the first single from a country album. In her Hall of Fame speech, Swift described her career as being able to “genre hop,” and framed Nashville as the place that taught her the craft, not the place she is moving back to. She has not said she is returning to country. A joke about a last yee-haw is not a statement of intent, and an awards booking is not a record deal.

The Parton tribute points the same way. If the night were built as a homecoming, the obvious stage would be the salute to the singer Swift has called “the ultimate showgirl.” She is not in it, according to E! News and Rolling Stone, and neither outlet reported why. A separate slot keeps the spotlight on her own nominated song, which is what an awards campaign needs. For country, the risk is clear. Swift can lose Single of the Year and still win the night. Langley can win everything and still lose the broadcast.

What is confirmed about Taylor Swift’s CMA night, and what is still open

Confirmed: Swift performs at the 60th CMA Awards, live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 18, from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern on ABC and Disney+, with next-day streaming on Hulu, as Variety and Deadline report. The announcement came on Nov. 13. Lainey Wilson hosts for a third straight year. Swift is nominated for Single of the Year; her last CMA performance was “Red” in 2013, the year she became only the second recipient of the Pinnacle Award after Garth Brooks, and her last appearance was in 2016, when she presented Entertainer of the Year to Brooks. She is not in the Parton tribute. Brothers Osborne, Hardy, Luke Bryan, Marcus King and Halestorm will salute Brooks & Dunn, this year’s Lifetime Achievement honorees.

Still open: what she will sing, beyond Variety’s educated guess. Even her CMA record depends on who is counting. Billboard, Rolling Stone and Deadline call this her 26th nomination, while Whiskey Riff counted 28. Billboard puts her wins at nine; The Tennessean counts 12 honors, adding two International Artist Achievement Awards and the Pinnacle Award to nine competitive trophies. Whether this is the start of a country return is a forecast from Saving Country Music, not anything Swift has said. And whether CMA voters can resist the story of handing her a trophy on the anniversary show, Trigger has already answered: he thinks they will.

Thirteen years ago Swift left the CMA stage with an acoustic “Red” and a Pinnacle Award for carrying country music to audiences worldwide. She comes back with a Pixar song, a single nomination and the role of underdog. The healthiest outcome for country would be the rarest one in her career: give Taylor Swift the stage, and give the trophy to someone else.

Tags: Taylor Swift, Ella Langley, Toy Story 5, I Knew It, I Knew You, CMA Awards, country singers

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