Last night, the 57th annual Country Music Association Awards went down at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, and the night made for a fascinating snapshot of a weird era in country music. Country dominated the pop charts this year, but most of the big country hits were leftfield successes in one way or another, whether they were culture-war anthems or alt-country outsider jams. The biggest story of the year, in both country and pop, is the overwhelming success of troubled young man Morgan Wallen, who was already huge but who found ways to get even huger. At last night’s show, we got the inevitable-in-retrospect moment where Morgan Wallen joined forces with Post Malone.

Post Malone’s country pivot feels like it’s been a long time coming, especially since his singer-songwriter era has not been particularly successful. Posty has long touted his love of country artists like George Strait, and the CMAs always makes room for at least one big pop-star crossover. (Last year, it was Katy Perry singing with Thomas Rhett.) On last night’s show, Margan Wallen and his frequent collaborator HARDY got together with Post Malone to pay tribute to Joe Diffie, the ’90s country star who died of COVID in 2020. (HARDY’s style is basically Walmart country meets late-’90s rap-metal; it’s rough.) Morgan Wallen and HARDY sang 1993’s “John Deere Green,” and then Post Malone joined them to cover 1994’s “Pickup Man.” Posty looked absolutely delighted to be out there. Both covers are streaming now and come from HIXTAPE Vol. 3: DIFFTAPE, a Diffie tribute collection out March 29. Watch the performance below.

That wasn’t the only Morgan Wallen performance of the night. Earlier in the show, Eric Church, the outlaw-country star, joined Wallen for a performance of their duet “Man Made A Bar,” which is now Church’s biggest hit. Wallen, I should point out, has cut off his trademark mullet. Here’s that performance.

Another big country-music story this year has been the meteoric rise of Jelly Roll, a guy who was once a face-tatted underground rapper and who has been fully embraced by the Nashville establishment for singing sad, emotionally intense songs about overcoming addiction. Jelly Roll started the show by duetting with Wynonna Judd on his massive hit “Need A Favor,” and he ended it by covering the Judds’ “Love Can Build A Bridge” with K. Michelle, the Memphis-born R&B singer and reality-TV star.

A number of country stars — Kenny Chesney, Mac McAnally, Alan Jackson, and the Zac Brown Band — paid tribute to the late Jimmy Buffet, a guy who wasn’t exactly a country musician but who was fully embraced by Nashville. Chesney and McAnally sang an acoustic version of “A Pirate Looks At Forty,” while Jackson and the Zac Brown Band joined Buffet’s Coral Reefer Band to play “Margaritaville.” Here’s the cover of “A Pirate Looks At Forty”:

The night’s biggest winner was Lainey Wilson. She won Entertainer Of The Year, Album Of The Year, and Female Vocalist Of The Year, while her HARDY collab “Wait In The Truck” won Music Video Of The Year — a huge come-up for someone who’s been working in Nashville for a long time. She also performed her song “Wildflowers And Wild Horses.”

Other performers included Ashley McBryde, the War And Treaty, and Chris Stapleton, who won Male Vocalist Of The Year. Tanya Tucker and Little Big Town performed “Delta Dawn,” the 1972 classic that Tucker released when she was 13. Luke Combs won Song Of The Year and Single Of The Year for his smash cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Song Of The Year is a songwriters’ award, and that win made Chapman the first Black songwriter ever to win that award. She did not show up to accept. Zach Bryan was there, but he didn’t perform or win any awards; he lost Best New Artist to Jelly Roll.