Morgan Wallen’s CMA Collabs: Post Malone, HARDY, Eric Church
Morgan Wallen’s suspension from performing on awards shows is very much a thing of the past. Last night at the CMA Awards, Wallen performed twice, and both times were collaborations with other artists.
First, Morgan was joined by surprise guest Eric Church for “Man Made A Bar.” “Man Made A Bar” is an album track from Wallen’s latest LP, One Thing At A Time. While award shows tend to promote every single performer and presenter, Church’s appearance came as a surprise to most fans. After the solid performance, the two country stars friends, who pay a lot of golf together, hugged.
Morgan’s second CMA performance last night (11/8) was with his buddy HARDY and Post Malone. The three stars paid tribute to country music hitmaker of the 1990s, Joe Diffie, who died in 2020 of COVID. The surprise collaboration to honor Diffie was actually revealed by accident by Luke Bryan in the CMA press conference, but in true Nashville style, journalists promised Bryan no one would tell the leaked story, and they did not.
The performance saw Wallen, HARDY, and country music fan Post Malone sing a medley of Diffie’s biggest hits after Diffie’s oldest son, Parker Diffie, and Bryan announced the performance. On a stage out in the crowd, the three happily sang Diffie’s “John Deere Green” and “Pickup Man.”
Backstage, HARDY told us that his next project would be HIXTAPE Vol. 3: DIFFTAPE, which will be released on March 29, 2024, centered around and as a tribute to the GRAMMY and CMA Award-winning catalog of country legend.
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HARDY told us, “We have gotten a hold of all of Joe Diffie’s tapes from the ’90s, the actual session themselves, and we have basically done what we have done with Hixtape, and we’ve taken some of Joe’s vocals out and all that, and we’ve added some of the biggest singers in country music to help him sing some of his biggest hit, and you saw two of those tonight.”
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