Hey y’all, it’s Brooke from Stars & Guitars and it’s that time of the year! We are here to talk all about the bests and worsts of the wacky year that was 2020. Aside from the obviously pretty annoying pandemic that happened this year, believe it or not, we still saw a lot of both good and bad news headlines and stories throughout the year. And this week Stars & Guitars has you covered!
We’ll kick things off with some of the bottom moments of 2020 including back at the very beginning of the year when the one and only Rascal Flatts announced their retirement after 20 years of success as a group. Things went from bad to worse real quick when the coronavirus forced the boys to cancel all of their farewell tour festivities. I can’t be the only one who is still dealing with sadness from that. I mean they are Rascal freaking Flatts! Another down moment of the year a lot of us maybe forgot about, as his PR team hoped we would, was Kane Brown getting lost in his own backyard. If you remember, he moved into a massive new house with tons of property and what do you do? You go out and explore it! What you don’t do is get lost. We’ll just call that a 2020 pro-tip from Kane Brown himself. For a more scary moment in 2020 we’re talking about Blanco Brown. You probably remember his massive hit, “The Git Up”, from earlier this year. Unfortunately back in August, the singer was involved in a head-on crash just outside of his home in Atlanta which landed him in the ICU after a 12 hour surgery. I can’t even imagine 12 hours of a lot of things… surgery is definitely one of those. Thankfully, he’s made a full recovery and I’m sure he’s back to writing another hit song as we speak. Then, in September, the ACM awards gave me a personal headache when they decided that two Entertainer of the Year winners was somehow acceptable. I still stand by the fact that both Carrie Underwood and Thomas Rhett deserved the award but come on, I’m still not even sure that a tie here is really possible. The cringe award show moments continued as Shania Twain returned, performing on the CMT awards. It was a moment that I, like many, was super excited for… before it turned to immediate disappointment. You know that day she sang her big hit “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under” to a room full of mannequins? Me too unfortunately and I’m still trying to forget it. And of course we can’t cover the worst stories of 2020 without the big “Morgan Wallen in ‘Bama” headline. He made no attempt to hide his big weekend at the University of Alabama, posting everything from the football game to the sorority houses after. Needless to say, he threw all Covid protocols out of the window and his big SNL debut performance also went out the window. Worth mentioning though, he is getting his second chance! Morgan Wallen will be performing on SNL this weekend Saturday, December 5th. For our last big worst moment of 2020 headlines, we have to talk about the boys of Florida Georgia Line. We’ll call them just a few more political victims of 2020. Brian Kelly and Tyler Hubbard unfollowed each other on social media for a short period of time sparking breakup rumors by fans. Rest assured though, deep breaths, they did come out to say it was just a political disagreement and they’re back to status quo, following each other, and making more hits with more collaborations than you can imagine.
We’re going to head to the better moments of 2020 and start off the list with CMT announcing a 50-50 gender split way back in January. Female artists previously occupied a significantly smaller space on the music network and now we’re proud to say equality has prevailed. Continuing with nods to the ladies, Mickey Guyton became the first African-American female to perform on the ACM awards show. Not only that, but the Grammys have more female nominations than ever before making 2020 a landmark year for females in music industry. The big Nashville tornado back in March of this year could definitely have landed on our worst list, however, it’s here simply because of the way Nashville pulled together. Nashville truly is one big community and we showed that with the amount of donations, physical labor help, and everything that came together in the weeks following the destructive tornado. We have got to give a nod to Kenny Chesney who’s had a fairly quiet year, understandably so. However, his big hit “Here and Now” landed at #1 on the country Airplay charts, making him the artist with the most hits on that chart. That’s right, King Chesney still has it.
While the 2020 might seem like a year with more downs than ups, we clearly had headlines and news stories on both ends of the spectrum. Likewise, next week here at Stars and Guitars, we’ll be collecting the best and worst music of 2020 so be sure to join us next time! And until then, keep crossing your fingers that 2021 is virus free and full of live music. I’ll see you next time!
