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America Strong: The Women of CMA

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Country music’s biggest night opened with every generation of its leading women on one stage at once.

The 53rd Annual CMA Awards kicked off from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on November 13, 2019, with a nine-minute opening medley that ABC News’ “World News Tonight with David Muir” featured the next evening as part of its “America Strong” series. Host Carrie Underwood shared the stage with Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton to launch an all-female salute spanning five decades of country hits, pulling in nearly two dozen performers across two stages before it was over.

• The medley opened with Underwood, Parton and McEntire singing “Those Memories of You” before handing off to Jennifer Nettles and Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman for “You’re Lookin’ at Country,” a tribute to Loretta Lynn, who sat in the audience and was acknowledged during the number.
• Parton then joined the newly formed supergroup The Highwomen — Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires — for Tammy Wynette’s “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,” with Tanya Tucker sitting in on “Delta Dawn.”
• The sequence rolled through Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue,” Terri Clark’s “Better Things to Do” and Sara Evans’ “Born to Fly” before Martina McBride brought every performer together for a closing rendition of “Independence Day.”

A Multi-Generational Lineup on One Stage

What made the opener stand out wasn’t just its length but its range — organizers built a lineup that put Crystal Gayle, whose “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” dates back to 1977, alongside Amanda Shires and Maren Morris of The Highwomen, a group that had only just formed earlier in 2019. Loretta Lynn’s presence in the crowd tied the whole sequence back to the genre’s earlier eras even as the show pushed forward into its newest acts.

Dual stages let the CMA producers move quickly between eras without a hard cut, sliding from Nettles and Little Big Town into The Highwomen’s set and then into Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” cameo. Tucker, a 1970s star who’d staged a comeback with her 2019 album “While I’m Livin’,” fit naturally alongside acts three and four decades younger.

Reviving Songs the Genre Built Its Identity On

Rather than performing new singles, the artists reached for songbook staples tied to specific women who shaped country radio — Wynette’s “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad,” Gretchen Wilson’s 2004 breakout “Redneck Woman,” and Terri Clark’s “Better Things to Do.” Sara Evans’ “Born to Fly,” a 2000 hit, bridged the older catalog into the more recent material before the show handed things to Martina McBride.

The medley closed with Martina McBride leading every performer on stage in her anthemic “Independence Day,” turning a solo hit into a full-cast finale.

The Show’s Larger Theme

CMA organizers built the entire telecast around, as the broadcast put it, “celebrating legendary women” — a framing that gave the opening number its shape and set up the rest of the night’s tributes to figures like Parton and McEntire. Underwood, who has hosted the CMA Awards multiple times, anchored the segment alongside two of the genre’s most decorated veterans, giving the sequence continuity even as the cast rotated performer to performer.

ABC News packaged the segment for its national morning and evening audience under the “America Strong” banner the day after the Bridgestone Arena show wrapped, treating the medley as a standalone moment worth revisiting outside the full three-hour broadcast. For CMA producers, the real test now is whether next year’s show tries to top a nine-minute, all-female opener that put Crystal Gayle and The Highwomen on the same stage — a bar that high doesn’t get cleared by accident.