The CMA Awards Was A Mask-Less Mess 

It might feel like it was just yesterday that the country music community jacked each other off with an awards show, and that’s because it practically was. The CMT Music Awards happened just a month ago, but the earth’s core will collapse if we don’t get regular sightings of Carrie Underwood slathered in sequins at a country music awards show. Other awards shows, including last month’s CMTs, went virtual, audience-less, and held performances in different places, but that didn’t happen at last night’s CMA Awards. They threw a hillbilly wink at coronavirus by holding that shit indoors, in one place, and with an audience. And before the show even began, several performers had to pull out like a bareback hillbilly who can’t afford another child support check and it was all because of COVID-19.

The Other Lady A, Jenee Fleenor, Lee Brice, Florida Georgia Line, and Rascal Flatts were all supposed to show up to last night’s CMA Awards, which were held at the Music City Center in downtown Nashville, TN. But coronavirus fucked with their plans. Jenee, Lee, Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line, and an unidentified member of Rascal Flatts all caught coronavirus before the show. The Other Lady A dropped out after one of their immediate family members tested positive for COVID-19. And there’s coronavirus spikes in Tennessee, but that didn’t stop the producers of the CMAs from shit-canning their plans for an audience of mask-less humans and instead fill the audience with rolls of sequins topped with blond wigs (we wouldn’t have known the difference, honestly). They went on as planned and burped up a statement to TVLine, saying that everyone was tested and that tables were kept eight feet apart:

A rep for the Country Music Association, which produces the ceremony, tells TVLine that “every single person” entering the venue — including crew, staff and artists — were tested for the coronavirus, and some were tested repeatedly in the week leading up to the ceremony “as an extra measure of caution.” The rep also noted the use of personal protective equipment and social and physical distancing; the tables in the audience were spaced eight feet apart, with no more than four attendees at any table.

In addition, guests were not allowed to mill about during commercial breaks, and apart from when they were sitting at their assigned tables, audience members were required to wear masks in the venue.

Reba McEntire and Darius Rucker hosted the CMA Awards together and made some coronavirus jokes, including one about Covidiot mullet disaster, Morgan Wallen, who lost his gig at Saturday Night Live because he was sucking face with randoms at parties as though the only threat to him and them was mono and the herp:

I don’t know… It looks like Reba and Darius got closer than six feet apart. What the CMA Awards needed to do was bring in Jon Hamm and put him in a Hazmat suit (with a foot-wide crotch cutout) and let The Hammaconda make sure that everyone was at least six feet apart. Shit, The Hammaconda could’ve made sure they were twelve feet apart!

And there were face shields on the table for show and sometimes people wore masks, but the CMA people must have a different definition of “not allowed to mill about during commercial breaks.” Because my eyes tell me that milling was definitely going on in these pictures of Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, Caylee Hammack, Lauren Alaina, and the Brothers Osborne:

But well, the good news for Miranda and those other wrecks is that her dress from 80s Wilsons Leather HELL is so ugly that even coronavirus would be like, “Barf, get me away from that hideousness!”

Pic: YouTube