At Wednesday night’s CMA Awards, Hardy, Wallen, and Malone paid tribute to the late singer by performing two of her classic songs.
At the 2023 Country Music Association Awards, which are now taking place at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, Morgan Wallen, Post Malone, and Hardy have just joined forces onstage.
Morgan and Hardy kicked off the Joe Diffie tribute by performing “John Deere Green,” a single from 1993 that was recorded by the late country legend. Next, Post Malone joined the band and sang “Pickup Man,” a song originally recorded by Diffie in 1994. Diffie passed away in the year 2020.
Post Malone had his very first performance at the CMA Awards last night. This appeared to be an inevitability given that Post Malone has already expressed his admiration for the genre.
At an earlier point in the evening, Wallen and Eric Church collaborated on a performance of their song “Man Made a Bar.”
After being forced to postpone certain dates of his tour due to a health crisis that resulted in his being sent to the hospital, Hardy made an emotional comeback to his tour only a month ago in the state of Arkansas.
“I’m going to make an effort to make it through the rest of this without sobbing. “Holy s—t,” Hardy said to the assembled people. “First and foremost, I want to reassure everyone that I’m doing well. Due to the fact that I am dealing with certain things at the moment, I was forced to cancel events over the past weekend. I absolutely hated having to do that. But that was something that I had to do for myself, and if you know me, you know how difficult it was for me because I like working. If you know me, you also know how difficult that was for me.
“I’m not going to lie, I was really nervous before I walked on the stage,” remarked the comedian. “It might hit me before the show is over but as I got on the stage, something in my brain said, ‘This is what you’re meant to do and you’re meant to be here tonight.'”
On November 8 at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (ET), ABC will broadcast a live broadcast of the 2023 CMA Awards, which will be hosted by Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning. You can see a complete list of the evening’s major winners right here.
