NASHVILLE — Ella Langley had two songs in the country Top 10 when she arrived at CMA Fest in June. By the time the Country Music Association announced the nominees for its 60th annual ceremony on Thursday morning, she had received nine nominations. That was more than any woman had earned in a single year since Lainey Wilson set the record three years ago, and it placed Langley alongside Miranda Lambert and Wilson as the only female artists in CMA history to reach that total.
The nominations were announced in two stages. Lara Spencer presented the major categories on Good Morning America, while Lee Ann Womack and Hannah Harper revealed the full ballot during a CMA YouTube livestream. By the time both announcements concluded, the direction of this year’s nominations season was clear. The awards cycle belongs, by an extraordinary margin, to a 26-year-old artist from Georgia.
Langley received recognition across every level of the ballot. She is competing for Entertainer of the Year alongside Luke Combs, Cody Johnson, Chris Stapleton, and host Lainey Wilson, creating the rare situation of a host appearing in the category she will announce at the November ceremony. Langley is also nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year for Dandelion, released in April through Sawgod and Columbia Records.
Two of Langley’s songs are competing against each other in both Song of the Year and Single of the Year. “Choosin’ Texas” and “Be Her” appear on the ballot in both categories. “Choosin’ Texas” spent 21 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of the longest chart runs achieved by a country song during the streaming era. “Be Her,” a collaboration with Ryan Hurd, built its audience more gradually but entered the awards race on its own strength. Together, the songs account for four of Langley’s nine nominations before the performance categories are included.
The co-writing credit on “Choosin’ Texas” matters for a specific reason: Miranda Lambert. Langley co-wrote the song with Lambert, Luke Dick, and Joybeth Taylor, and produced it with Lambert and Ben West. The collaboration placed Lambert at the center of one of country music’s biggest songs this year, even before her seven individual nominations were counted. Lambert leads all returning nominees behind Langley, and her role in Langley’s story is not a footnote. It runs through the DNA of the year’s dominant song.
Ben West, who produced or co-produced much of the work driving this nominations cycle, received five nominations of his own. Kacey Musgraves also earned five, supported by “Middle of Nowhere,” her May release and fifth studio album. The project attracted the kind of critical attention that reminded the country industry why it awarded her Album of the Year in 2019. Whether voters will view her return as a homecoming or a correction is the subtler question behind her five nominations.
The 60th annual CMA Awards will air live on ABC at 8 p.m. ET on November 18, with a simultaneous stream on Disney+ and next-day availability on Hulu. The ceremony will take place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
The nominations arrive at the end of a difficult stretch for the country music industry. Dolly Parton’s estate revealed plans for a two-continent tribute celebration called Dollyfest barely a week ago, still within the immediate aftermath of her death at 80 on August 25. Earlier this summer, Bill Cody, the WSM Radio host and Grand Ole Opry fixture whose 30-year run on “Coffee, Country and Cody” made him one of Nashville radio’s most recognized voices, died at 67. Tim McGraw, returning from back surgery to resume touring, fell onstage at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati last Thursday. The CMA nominations, with their category structure and roster logic, offer something the industry has been short of lately: a clear competitive argument to follow into the fall.
Ella Langley is the argument. Nine nominations do not resolve into a clean prediction. “Choosin’ Texas” and “Be Her” competing against each other for the same two awards creates a situation where she could split the votes, lose both to herself, or sweep. The Entertainer of the Year race puts her against four artists with more tenure in the category. Album of the Year for “Dandelion” may depend on whether voters see the record as a platform for singles or as something more sustained.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the nominations reflect a consensus in Nashville’s voting body that rarely forms this decisively around a single artist in a breakout year.
What is not in doubt is what the nominations announce. Country music in November 2026, 60 years into the CMA Awards, will organize itself around an artist who released her second album in April and spent most of the summer at No. 1. The question the ceremony will answer is whether nine nominations and a record-tying total are the beginning of something, or the whole statement.
