Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan slow things down.
The country singer and “Stick Season” artist took the stage at the 2024 CMA Awards on Wednesday, November 20 to perform her emotional duet “Cowboys Cry Too.”
With matching white outfits and smoke wafting across the stage floor, Ballerini, 31, and Kahan, 27, brought out the plumbing during their performance.
“Cowboys cry too/Maybe they won’t let ’em fall in their hometown/Thinking they still got s— to prove/That’s good deep,” Ballerini sings on the chorus. “But when he shows his skin, he lets me in/That’s when he’s the hardest on me/I didn’t know/And cowboys cry.”
Noah Kahan and Kelsea Ballerini.
Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty
Lainey Wilson (and her ringleaders) join returning hosts Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning at the 2024 CMA Awards.
Ballerini dropped the country ballad on June 28. In an interview with the Wayne D Show at the time, she revealed that she met Kahan at the 2024 Grammys in February, and he asked her about her 2015 hit “Peter Pan.”
Then, while working on the song, she thought of Kahan because she paid tribute to “the men in my life who are emotional” and knew he would be “so mad to go there.”
“He wrote his verse and it just made the song a million times better,” she said.
See all of PEOPLE’s complete CMA Awards here.
In May, the pair joined forces for a medley of “Mountain with a View” and Kahan’s hit “Stick Season” at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
“Cowboys Cry Too” served as the lead single for Ballerini’s new album Forms. In October, she revealed to PEOPLE the inspiration for the album.
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Noah Kahan and Kelsea Ballerini.
Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty
Best Dressed Stars at the 2024 CMA Awards
“I think that’s what happens when you turn 30 when you kind of take stock of your life,” Ballerini said. “And I came in for a breath of air and I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s do a little inventory here. What do I love in my life right now? What is unpleasant? What did I contribute to both things? What are my samples? And then what do I want to do and edit on myself? And then in my closest, most interpersonal relationships, what do I want to arrange and challenge and also celebrate?’”
She added: “It’s really the whole record thematically. It’s just a deep dive into the self-esteem of entering your thirties.”
The 58th Annual CMA Awards air live from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday, November 20 from 8-11pm on ABC. The show airs the next day on Hulu.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education