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      What Country Music Asked of Charley Pride

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookWhat Country Music Asked of Charley PrideThe singer put himself on the line to become the genre’s first Black superstar. He died on Saturday not long after performing at a largely mask-free awards ceremony.Charley Pride onstage in 1975. The country star’s 1994 memoir, “Pride: The Charley Pride Story,” details a litany of aggressions he experienced in his career. Credit…Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesDec. 14, 2020At the 54th annual Country Music Association Awards last month, there was Charley Pride, onstage singing his indelible 1971 hit “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” alongside the rising country star Jimmie Allen. In the socially distanced audience, Nashville luminaries took in the wondrous spectacle. Eric Church, exuding stoic cool — no mask. Brothers Osborne singing along — no masks. Ashley McBryde swaying to the music — no mask.Here were two kinds of wish fulfillment, tightly holding hands. First, honoring Pride, who also received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award that night, was a belated effort at demonstrating sufficient respect for country music’s first Black superstar. Pride was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2017, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys. “I’m going to put this with all the other awards,” he said backstage after the show, clutching the trophy.And then there were those unadorned faces, telegraphing a certain blitheness about the coronavirus, which was, at the time of the show, raging through the country. On the day the awards were filmed, 1,576 Covid-19 deaths were reported in the United States, according to the Covid Tracking Project — at the time, it was the most in one day this country had seen since mid-May, near the end of the pandemic’s initial wave. (That daily death count has been topped 15 times since the CMAs.)[embedded content]Of all the recent awards shows — the BET Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, the Billboard Awards, the Latin Grammys, the American Music Awards — the CMAs were singular in showing almost no people wearing masks, either onstage or in the audience. (It was also one of very few shows with an audience of any kind.)If you believed what you were watching, you might think that the country music business was a tolerant one, encouraging of Black performers and willing to acknowledge the genre’s debt to Black music. And you might believe that it was possible for a gaggle of superstars (and the behind-the-scenes people who help them navigate the world) to keep the pandemic at bay.The optics were pretty much seamless, the reality less so. Five of the show’s planned performers pulled out because they tested positive for the coronavirus, or were exposed to someone who did. And most cruel was the news that this past Saturday, a month after the awards, Pride died, at 86, of complications of Covid-19. It is likely impossible to know whether Pride contracted the virus traveling from Texas to Nashville, or at the CMAs, but many, including the country stars Maren Morris and Mickey Guyton, expressed reasonable concern on Twitter that Pride’s appearance on the show might have led to his exposure. (The CMA released a joint statement with Pride’s representatives after his death noting that Pride had tested negative for the coronavirus before, during and after attending the awards.)It would not have been the first time Pride risked his well-being and safety in the name of country music’s embrace. His 1994 memoir, “Pride: The Charley Pride Story,” details a litany of microaggressions and macroaggressions he experienced in his career. To be a Black performer in country, especially in the throes of the civil rights era, when Pride was getting his footing, was to put yourself on the line. Opening for Willie Nelson in Dallas in 1967, Pride was warned the crowd was potentially hostile. Not to worry, the promoter told him, because they were prepared to rapidly pull him offstage if the situation turned dire.“My mouth went so dry it felt like it was stuffed with cotton,” Pride wrote. “He’s not talking about name calling. He thinks something really bad might happen in a room with ten thousand people, and he only has two guys to get me out?” (The show went smoothly.)He had to be careful about his song selection. “There was a time, after all,” Pride wrote, “when it was deemed unsafe to sing ‘Green, Green Grass of Home’ because it was about a condemned prisoner dreaming of his woman with ‘hair of gold.’”Pride remembered being called slurs by performers who were his colleagues and friends; how George Jones and another man scrawled “KKK” on his car after a bender; and how he had to remind Webb Pierce — who told him it’s “good for you to be in our music” — that “It’s my music, too.”Pride mostly relates these stories with dispassion, sometimes even with flickers of affection: These occurrences were simply the cost of doing business as a boundary-crashing pioneer. In the book, he is expressly resistant to politics, and seems eager to assure everyone — fellow Nashville stars, show promoters and people he meets along the way — that he’s got no interest in starting trouble, or being near it.Pride was a pathbreaker, but the path largely remained empty in his wake.Credit…Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesUltimately, Pride was rewarded by the country music business — by the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, he was one of the genre’s central, crucial performers, a part of the firmament. But he was also, naturally, the exception that proved the rule — even with his success as an example, the country music industry remained largely inhospitable to Black performers. He was a one of one.Nashville is ever so slightly more progressive now when it comes to diversity. Still, of all the pressures applied to the save-face-insistent country music industry this year, the racial justice reckonings of the summer certainly have been the most challenging to face up to.The CMAs are the most revered of the Nashville industry awards shows — in 1971, Pride won entertainer of the year, the show’s highest honor — and its choice to bestow Pride with the lifetime achievement award this year felt, at a minimum, conspicuous.It was of course a lovely gesture on its own terms. Darius Rucker, one of the show’s hosts and the most successful Black country singer since Pride, has frequently cited Pride’s influence. And Pride’s duet partner, Allen, is a promising young pop-country talent and one of a handful of Black singers with recent hits. But their performance also had the air of tokenism — did no white country star also want to pay tribute to a genre legend?Pride is not the first victim of the coronavirus in country music; the 1990s star Joe Diffie died in March, and John Prine (who wasn’t even acknowledged at the CMAs) died in April.But just because the coronavirus has hit close to home has not discouraged country music stars from taking public risks with their health and others’. In June, Chase Rice played a concert for several hundred fans, and was roundly criticized after video appeared online of maskless revelers clustered together near the stage. Around the same time, Chris Janson was similarly criticized for performing for hundreds of fans. (In this, country stars are not alone; an Ohio venue was recently fined for hosting a Trey Songz performance, and New York officials have reported routinely shutting down dance parties in the city.)In October, Morgan Wallen was forced to withdraw from a scheduled appearance on “Saturday Night Live” after video emerged on TikTok of him partying with — and in one case kissing — fans in Alabama. Wallen ended up performing on the show earlier this month, and even participated in a skit poking fun at his indiscretions.Those things don’t simply happen because of individual choices — they happen because of a system that forgives certain kinds of transgressions, and because of an industry that sees no tension between satisfying the thirst of fans and potentially putting them and their loved ones at risk.Those responsible for organizing the CMAs were not unaware of the risks posed by the coronavirus. The CMA president, Sarah Trahern, told Variety that the organization administered around 3,000 coronavirus tests to performers and staff, in addition to temperature checks and questionnaires. The performers who attended were given face shields to wear anytime they were not seated at their table or onstage during the event. In footage posted from backstage during show rehearsals, the show’s executive producer, Robert Deaton, is shown wearing a mask and a face shield when speaking to Pride and Allen about their performance.Unsurprisingly, the CMAs went into damage control mode this weekend. The organization’s news release about Pride’s death mentioned his award, but made no mention of his performance last month.Regardless, recent events are a painful asterisk on Pride’s career, and a reminder of the ways Nashville remained deaf to his unique circumstances. That insensitivity continues apace. Pride was a pathbreaker, but the path largely remained empty in his wake, owing to an industry for which the image of racial comity is more important than the furtherance of it, and for which the appearance of freedom during a pandemic far outweighs any cost that arises from that hubris.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Shawn Mendes Hits No. 1 for the Fourth Time

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ChartsShawn Mendes Hits No. 1 for the Fourth TimeThe pop-rock singer and songwriter’s latest album, “Wonder,” debuted at the top a week before Taylor Swift’s surprise “Evermore” arrives on the chart.Credit…David Livingston/Getty ImagesDec. 14, 2020, 12:27 p.m. ETFive years ago, Shawn Mendes was a fresh-faced 11th-grader from Pickering, Ontario, who had ridden a wave of six-second videos on the defunct app Vine — the proto-TikTok — into a surprise No. 1 debut album.Now, at 22, he is a veteran hitmaker whose four studio LPs have all gone to the top of Billboard’s album chart. His latest, “Wonder,” opened with the equivalent of 89,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen Music, including 47 million streams and 54,000 copies sold as a complete package.Mendes reached No. 1 just in time before Taylor Swift’s “Evermore,” her second quarantine album, which came out on Friday with less than a day’s notice and is expected to have a huge opening on next week’s chart.The rest of this week’s Top 10 is dominated by recurring hits and holiday albums.Bad Bunny’s “El Último Tour del Mundo,” last week’s No. 1, fell to second place in its second week out, while Ariana Grande’s “Positions,” another recent chart topper, is No. 3.Michael Bublé’s “Christmas,” a steady seasonal hit since 2011, is No. 4, and Carrie Underwood’s Christmas album “My Gift,” which had peaked at No. 8 when released in September, rose to No. 5. Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” is No. 7, Pentatonix’s “The Best of Pentatonix Christmas” is No. 8 and Mariah Carey’s “Merry Christmas” is No. 10.According to Billboard, it is the first time in seven years that five holiday-themed albums were in the Top 10.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Beethoven's Greatness Is in the Details

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookBeethoven’s 250th Birthday: His Greatness Is in the DetailsBrahms, Wagner, even Sondheim: All have followed the great master in building their works from small bits of music.Credit…Eleni KalorkotiDec. 14, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETThe classical music industry had planned to go all out commemorating Beethoven’s 250th anniversary this year, culminating in his birthday this week. As it happens, the precise date of his birth is uncertain. Records indicate that he was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on Dec. 17, 1770. Since it was customary then to carry out that ritual within 24 hours of a birth, it’s been assumed he was born on Dec. 16 — but we don’t know for sure.Performances were scheduled throughout the year and around the world. The Boston Symphony Orchestra planned to open its season this fall with a cycle of the nine symphonies. The Barbican Center in London was presenting a yearlong festival. Carnegie Hall said it would devote roughly a fifth of its 2019-20 season to his music.But when the pandemic hit, Beethoven’s birthday party was largely canceled, along with the rest of the global performing arts calendar.Have no fear, though: He’s doing just fine. As Carnegie’s promotional materials put it, Beethoven “rouses our spirits, moves us to tears, and inspires our most profound thoughts”; he is “without challenge the face of Western classical music.” Whew. Indeed, I was impressed that the New York Philharmonic chose mostly to ignore the anniversary. Instead, this February the orchestra began Project 19, commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment by commissioning works by 19 female composers. Here was an important venture that would honor the heritage that Beethoven epitomizes by bringing it into the present and empowering fresh voices.Beethoven’s dominance of classical programming is a little crazy. Yet he was indisputably amazing. He cultivated the mystique of the composer as colossus, as a seer and hero striding the earth, channeling messages from on high and revealing them to us mere mortals.In person, he may not have advanced this image. Unkempt and ornery, he had delusions about having royal blood, kept falling for women of the upper ranks in Vienna who were unattainable matches, and, in a pathetic attempt at having a family, spent years in court fighting to gain custody of his nephew from the boy’s widowed mother, whom he considered morally unfit. (He succeeded, with predictably fraught results.)Yet perhaps his odd appearance and manner, as well as his valiant struggle with deafness, actually contributed to the spell he cast. And whatever his personality, his music does seem to define grandeur and heroism.What do we hear in the film “The King’s Speech” when George VI of England addresses his subjects at the start of World War II? The slow movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony — music that sounds like a solemn, steadily determined march.Still, there is a long tradition of debunking the heroic trappings of Beethoven’s works. In a 1945 review of George Szell conducting the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Virgil Thomson acknowledges the history of hearing the piece as expressing victory, fate, the hope of conquered nations to resist tyranny, and the like. Sure enough, he writes, Szell conducted a “thoroughly demagogic and militarized version of it.” But not to worry: “The piece will recover from its present military service just as easily as it has from its past metaphysical and political associations.”Yes, Beethoven wrote heroic pieces. But those scores are often filled out with audacious flights. And he wrote just as many brazenly humorous, even hilarious works, like the Presto finale of his early Piano Sonata No. 6 in F, which could be the score for a slapstick silent film.Even the finale of the “Eroica” Symphony, for all its Promethean energy, is boisterous and full of musical jokes. Beethoven takes a kind of comic tune and puts it through a series of improbable yet triumphant variations. Yet all these works, whether riotous, near-crazed, strangely mystical or sublime, somehow embody greatness and come across as inevitable, as if the music simply must be the way it is. Why?It’s all in the details. Beethoven was a master — maybe the ultimate master — of the technique of using small motifs (a few notes, a melodic fragment, a rhythmic gesture) to generate an entire movement, even an entire composition. This is something he learned in part from Haydn during the time he spent with the older master in Vienna, as well as from studying and copying out Haydn’s scores, which he continued to do for years.But Beethoven took the technique to a new level of sophistication. Concertgoers may not consciously pick up all the recurrences and manipulations of motifs in a Beethoven piece. Still, those interrelated elements come through subliminally, even for those not trained in music. That’s why a wild romp, like the frenetic, dancing final movement of the Seventh Symphony, also seems a cohesive, coherent entity, a truly great piece.Achieving motivic coherence in his scores was not easy for Beethoven to pull off. Leonard Bernstein made a few attempts to explain this in his televised lectures, including once in a famous 1954 Omnibus program on Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, when he examined how the opening four notes — the so-called “fate” motif — are used like a “springboard for the symphonic continuity to come.”Then, at the piano and with an orchestra, Bernstein performed passages reconstructed from sketches Beethoven had discarded; he wanted to show how ineffective some of these rejects were — until Beethoven got it right. Bernstein dug deeper into Beethoven’s procedures during one of his 1973 Norton Lectures (broadcast in 1976), when he took apart the first movement of the “Pastoral” Symphony. He asked the audience to get rid of all its notions that the piece is about “birds and brooks and rustic pleasures,” and proceeded to reveal how the whole movement is constructed out of materials contained in just the first four measures.Composers after Beethoven were powerfully influenced by this technique, and not just Brahms and Mahler in their symphonies. Wagner adapted Beethoven’s approach in his operas, using “leitmotifs” to organize works that lasted hours. Puccini had his own version of the procedure.Stephen Sondheim, fresh from college, studied the scores of Beethoven quartets, among other works, during private lessons with the 12-tone composer Milton Babbitt. The most important thing he learned from these lessons, Mr. Sondheim told me in an interview many years ago, was the principle of “long-lined composition.”“How do you organize materials to last for three minutes, 15 minutes, 33 minutes?” he said. “This turned out to be very useful when I started writing long songs and scenes, like ‘Someone in a Tree’ [in ‘Pacific Overtures’] and the opening of Act II in ‘Sweeney Todd.’”In “Merrily We Roll Along,” the songs are “interconnected through chunks of melody, rhythm and accompaniment,” Mr. Sondheim wrote in the liner notes for the original cast recording. Surely that’s the way Beethoven would have written a score for a Broadway musical.Even today I’ll often read, for example, a composer’s program note explaining that a new chamber music piece written in a single 15-minute movement and an essentially atonal language is based on a five-note motif. Beethoven would approve.In his late period, Beethoven entered a sphere that seemed almost mystical, and considered himself not just a composer but also a “Tondichter” (“tone poet”). Yet even when exploring new realms of structure and sound, Beethoven generated these late scores from small motifs. Wagner studied the seven-movement Op. 131 String Quartet obsessively, seeing in it a model for ways to structure a music drama.It is telling that the last concert I heard before the pandemic closed theaters worldwide was at Carnegie Hall on March 8, when the violinist Leonidas Kavakos, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the pianist Emanuel Ax played, yes, Beethoven, ending with the majestic and awesome, searching and impetuous “Archduke” Trio. Even if Beethoven’s big birthday has not been what we expected, that superb performance of his trio, just before everything stopped, has kept coming back to me, a lasting party.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Beethoven’s 250th Birthday: Here’s Everything You Need to Know

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBeethoven’s 250th Birthday: Here’s Everything You Need to KnowExplore the music, life and times of the composer who changed culture.Credit…Gabriel AlcalaDec. 14, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETNo composer left a mark on music quite like Ludwig van Beethoven. He took the popular forms of his time — symphony, string quartet, piano sonata, opera — and stretched them to their breaking points. He embodied the then-new ideal of the musician as passionate, politically engaged Romantic hero.In honor of the 250th anniversary of his birth — he was baptized Dec. 17, 1770, and probably born a day or two earlier — writers and critics for The New York Times have spent the year choosing their favorite recordings; delving into his life and times; traveling from the house where he was born in Bonn, Germany, to his grave in Vienna, Austria; speaking with some of his best interpreters; and exploring his vast, influential body of work. It is, if not everything you need to know about Beethoven, then a pretty good start.Listen to the Best of His MusicWe asked some of our favorite artists which five minutes of his music they would play to make their friends fall in love with Beethoven. We created our dream cycle of his nine symphonies, picking a favorite recording of each. And our chief classical critic describes how his works are built from tiny bits of material.Following in His Footsteps“The time seemed ripe for a pilgrimage in search of Beethoven, the man,” our reporter wrote early this year. We also published profiles of people who surrounded him, prodded and inspired him.A Bold Way to Perform His Symphonies“He was not somebody who was content to write elegant music for easy listening,” said the conductor John Eliot Gardiner, who uses rough, fresh instruments like those played in Beethoven’s time. Our critic wrote that this was “exactly what we needed in this year of Beethoven saturation.”Confronting His Piano SonatasOur chief critic, who took on the daunting Op. 110 Sonata in college, explores the “extraordinary achievement” of Igor Levit’s new recording of the full set, while cherishing Artur Schnabel’s classic cycle. And the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard talks about why he thinks of Beethoven as avant-garde — still.A Nine-Hour Marathon: His QuartetsWhat is it like listening to all 17 of his works for string quartet? It gave one writer “an acute awareness of the extraordinary range of sensations Beethoven depicts. Joy. Rage. Slyness. Gravitas. Grief. Snickering. Despair. Holiness.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Justin Bieber Humbled to Re-Record 'Holy' With NHS Trust Choir for Charity

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      This special collaboration comes five years after the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS choir beat the ‘Love Yourself’ hitmaker to the top of the charts with their version of ‘A Bridge Over You’.

      Dec 14, 2020
      AceShowbiz – Justin Bieber is making a last-minute bid for Britain’s Christmas number one after teaming up with the NHS Trust Choir to re-record his hit “Holy”.
      The collaboration comes five years after the choir singers beat the “Baby” hitmaker to the top of the charts.
      “It’s great to be reunited with the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS choir, as we share a fun bit of U.K. chart history together,” Bieber told The Mirror. “Especially in these difficult times, I’m humbled to team up with them for a charity single that will benefit NHS workers on the frontlines of this pandemic and pay tribute to their unbelievable dedication.”
      Zoe Davies, who is part of the choir, said, “Seriously I remember joking about us doing a duet and now it’s happening.”

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      Justin impressed the choir members back in 2015 when he urged fans to purchase their version of “A Bridge Over You”, instead of his track “Love Yourself”. He then met with the group and said, “I was honoured to meet everyone from the choir and I’m really happy that they got their number one.”
      The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir reunited with the Canadian singer at Abbey Road Studios to record the new version of “Holy”, which Bieber released in September.
      In other news, Justin treated fans to a performance of his 2009 hit “Baby” as he sang the song at an art auction in Los Angeles on Friday night, December 9. Jaden Smith also joined him in the performance.
      Justin attended the auction with his wife Hailey Baldwin. Also among the attendees that night were Kris Jenner and Kylie Jenner.

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      Artist of the Week: Carrie Underwood

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      The ‘Cry Pretty’ singer is having an early Christmas celebration as her first-ever festive studio album ‘The Gift’ gains new steam ahead of the jolly holiday after making a high debut on the charts.

      Dec 14, 2020
      AceShowbiz – Carrie Underwood is having a special present for her fans this Christmas. The champion of “American Idol” season 4 is celebrating the jolly season early with her first ever festive studio album fittingly titled “My Gift”.
      She hoped the album could give everyone a little relief amid the doom and gloom of 2020. “Now more than ever we all need to focus on what Christmas is about, rely more on our family and even though it has been a tough year sometimes I feel like the greatest realisations can come during the worst times or the most stressful times,” she said. “And it makes you more thankful for the things that you do have.”
      The 11-track album is a mix of originals and holiday classics. One of the brand new songs is a wholesome collaboration with John Legend called “Hallelujah” while one of the covers is revamp of “The Little Drummer Boy” featuring Carrie’s own little son Isaiah Fisher.

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      It debuted at No. 8 on Billboard Hot 200 and hit the pinnacle on the Billboard Top Country Albums, marking Carrie’s eighth consecutive No. 1 album on the Country chart. It also reigned the Top Christian Albums and Top Holiday Albums.
      The Christmas album, released in September, gains new steam as the holiday is fast approaching. Getting extra boost from Carrie’s new holiday special which premiered on HBO Max, it rose from No. 10 to No. 9 (44,000; up 26%) on the Hot 200.
      While climbing the charts, Carrie Underwood is shining at the prestigious country music awards. She took home the coveted Female Artist of the Year title at the ACM Awards and collected both Female Video of the Year and Video of the year at the CMT Awards for “Drinking Alone” from her 2018 album “Cry Pretty”.

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      Danielle Haim Struggles to Write New Music Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

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      The guitarist and drummer of Haim opens up about her struggles with lack of inspiration as she tried to write new songs amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

      Dec 14, 2020
      AceShowbiz – Danielle Haim has struggled to write music amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
      The 31-year-old guitarist and drummer, who is in the band Haim with her sisters Este and Alana, admitted the uncertainty of 2020, including the ongoing pandemic, has left her suffering with a lack of inspiration and she has found it hard to pen new music.

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      She told The Guardian newspaper, “I rallied, I tried to write music the last couple of months, but it’s so difficult for me to do it, I don’t know what’s going on. For my sisters and I, it is just about showing up and willing that something happens, but it’s been hard. I feel privileged not having children – I’m trying to imagine what it would have been like if I had kids.”
      Danielle also spoke about how the pandemic affected Haim’s plans to tour their latest album, calling it a “bummer.”
      She said, “We made our album in a room, playing together, more than we’ve done on any other album we’ve put out. We had all these ideas about how we were going to tour it, we booked a whole tour and festivals – we were going to do a whole deli tour and the night Tom Hanks came out with the news that he had coronavirus, we were in (Washington) D.C. in a small deli performing a stripped-down set. It was wild. So just releasing something and not having that dialectical experience with a crowd about this music we’ve been working on for a year, that was a bummer.”

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      CMA Responds to Speculation Linking Charley Pride's COVID-19 Death to Awards Show

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      In a statement issued after many question the safety of the ceremony, the Country Music Association insists that all protocols were followed during the indoor event.

      Dec 14, 2020
      AceShowbiz – The Country Music Association has defended its recent annual awards event after it was linked to Charley Pride’s death. The country music legend passed away on Saturday, December 12, a month after performing and being presented with a lifetime achievement award at the November 11 event, prompting many to speculate if he contracted the virus while attending the show.
      Responding to this, the CMA issued a statement on Sunday to address how they made sure the safety during the indoor event. “Everyone affiliated with the CMA Awards followed strict testing protocols outlined by the city health department and unions. Charley was tested prior to traveling to Nashville,” they wrote.
      The CMA further stated, “He was tested upon landing in Nashville, and again on show day, with all tests coming back negative. After returning to Texas following the CMA Awards, Charley again tested negative multiple times. All of us in the Country Music community are heartbroken by Charley’s passing. Out of respect for his family during their grieving period, we will not be commenting on this further.”
      Among those questioning the safety of the CMAs was Maren Morris, who was also present at the event. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions because no family statement has been made, but if this was a result of the CMAs being indoors, we should all be outraged,” the 30-year-old star tweeted on Saturday while mourning Charley’s death. “Rest in power, Charley.”

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      One person criticized Maren for her suspicion, writing, “Coming from an artist that also attended the indoor event…” The “To Hell & Back” singer then defended her criticism at the event. “Hence ‘WE’ should be outraged,” she replied, before adding, “F**k this f**king year.”

      Maren Morris responded to a user slamming her for criticizing CMA Awards.
      Maren eventually deleted the said tweet, but that didn’t stop the backlash. Another slammed the “My Church” hitmaker, “Screw you @MarenMorris! How dare you even think about jumping to conclusions at a time like this. You’ve lost a fan in me.” The Texas native had a cool response to it, writing back, “love you!” with a waving hand emoji.

      Charley’s death was announced by his family on Sunday. “It is with great sadness that we confirm that Charley Pride passed away this morning, Saturday, December 12, 2020, in Dallas, Texas of complications from COVID-19 at age 86,” they posted on Facebook. “He was admitted to the hospital in late November with COVID-19 type symptoms and despite the incredible efforts, skill and care of his medical team over the past several weeks, he was unable to overcome the virus. Charley felt blessed to have such wonderful fans all over the world. And he would want his fans to take this virus very seriously.”

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      Cody Simpson Scores ‘Personal Milestone’ by Securing Australian Olympic Swimming Trials

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