Hell Yes, Lainey Wilson Deserved the CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year

The 2025 CMA Awards took Nashville by storm this week, crowning new winners and welcoming fresh faces. In this special bonus episode of Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, we break down the good, the bad, and the “what were they thinking?!” Country music journalist Marissa R. Moss joins host Joseph Hudak to heap praise, talk smack, and question if the country music establishment finally got it right.

For instance, did Lainey Wilson deserve to win the top prize of Entertainer of the Year? “Hell yes,” Moss says. “I think she’s a great entertainer. Everybody knows who Lainey Wilson is now. She brought country music into a lot of different living rooms, which is the whole point.”

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Wilson also took an opportunity to jab at online commentators, their hands deep in a bag of Cheetos, desperate to pit women against one another. “Y’all need to find something better to do,” Wilson said.

“Because [Wilson is] successful doesn’t take away from the success of other women. Country music does get really preoccupied with only anointing one or two women at a time as far as country radio goes,” Moss says. “But that is not Lainey Wilson’s fucking problem.”

Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, and Clever.

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