Introduction
When the CMAs Needed a Spark, Lainey Wilson Delivered a Whole History Lesson in One Medley
There are award-show openers designed to be loud, and then there are openers designed to mean something. Lainey Wilson Sings a Medley of Iconic Country Songs | Live at CMA Awards 2025 belongs to the second kind—a performance that doesn’t just warm up the room, but reminds everyone what country music is supposed to do: connect generations, honor the classics, and still feel alive in the present.
The 59th CMA Awards had plenty of star power, but the choice to begin with Lainey was telling. Wilson has become one of the genre’s most reliable bridges between tradition and momentum—an artist who can wear modern success without losing the storytelling backbone that older listeners value. On a night where she also took home major honors, including Entertainer of the Year, she didn’t open with ego. She opened with gratitude—for the songs, the singers, and the shared memory bank that keeps this music standing.
What makes a medley so difficult is pace. You have to move fast without feeling rushed, and you have to nod to multiple eras without sounding like a jukebox. By most accounts, Wilson’s opening run moved through a spread of crowd-recognizable country touchstones—songs associated with contemporary hitmakers and modern classics—while keeping a single emotional thread: this is who we are, and this is what we carry.
The details matter, too. Reports describe a “star-studded” structure—Wilson joined by guests (including names like Keith Urban and Charlie Worsham) as the medley shifted gears, which gave the performance the feeling of community rather than a solo spotlight. And that’s the subtle brilliance: country music works best when it feels like a front-porch circle, even inside an arena. A medley can easily become a technical flex; here, it functioned more like a handshake between artists and eras, the kind of moment that makes longtime fans sit up and think, “They still get it.”
If you’ve followed Wilson’s rise, you know she’s not chasing polish for its own sake. Her strength is clarity—clear phrasing, clear emotion, clear respect for the lyric. So when she stands at the center of a CMA stage and runs the genre’s DNA through a few concentrated minutes, the effect is more than entertainment. It’s reassurance. In a noisy culture, it’s comforting to hear an artist treat the music like something worth protecting—and worth celebrating out loud.