Country Music Awards Celebrating Legendary Women in Country Music
By Chloe Cornell
Country Music’s “Biggest Night” is undergoing a change this year. After 11 years of hosting the Country Music Awards alongside Brad Paisley, this year Carrie Underwood will instead be hosting alongside Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire as the show will be celebrating legendary women in country music. Airing live from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on November 13th, the 53rd Annual Country Music Awards will be the first time a country music event is being hosted by a group of women. The superstars, together having been nominated for 124 CMA Awards and claiming 22 wins total, are perfect hosts for this year’s special show.
Carrie said she is excited for the awards show to celebrate iconic women telling Taste of Country, “We just want to be respectful of our genre and of this awards show, because it’s so important to us, and shine a light on what I think is the backbone of country music, and that’s the females that have come before all of us and will come in the future.”
She wrote on her Instagram:
“So thankful to the @cma for wanting to honor the women of Country Music for this year’s #CMAAwards ! I couldn’t be more excited to get to stand up there with 2 of my personal heroes… @reba and @dollyparton are trailblazers, icons and legends. We’re gonna make Country Music proud on November 13th! #DreamComeTrue#WomenOfCountryMusic #Sheroes”
The show’s current lineup includes performances by all three hosts with Dolly singing with For King & Country and Zach Williams. Also performing are Miranda Lambert, Maren Morris, P!nk & Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban, Eric Church and Luke Combs.
Carrie Underwood is also up for “Entertainer of the Year” – the sole woman nominated for the biggest prize of the night. Other nominees in the category are Keith Urban, Garth Brooks, Eric Church and Chris Stapleton. Miranda Lambert has made it clear that she is rooting for Carrie to win the award with a post on Instagram that complimented all of the performers, but said about Carrie:
“Carrie- The Entertainer Of The Year. Because… Currently being on tour with all female artists, I’ve been thinking a lot about all the work that goes into what we do. The most amazing job in the world. But it ain’t for the faint of heart. @carrieunderwood is on an all female tour too. The Cry Pretty Tour 360. She put out her first single in 2005 and from then on country music was changed for good. That iconic voice has been classin’ up our stages, charts and televisions for a decade and a half. The Voice. The legs. The songs. The brand. The mom. The wife. The okie. The Jesus lover. The blonde bombshell that is Carrie. She blows me away every time I hear her sing. She never wavers in who she is or what she stands for. She has stayed true & pushed herself to be better. If you have never heard her sing “How Great Thou Art” do yourself a favor and listen. I have her back in this picture and I’ll always have her back. So for the sake of sequins, spanx and spray tans, take it home! You Carrie the torch! 😉#Carrieon#EOTY”
Make sure to tune in on ABC at 8pm to catch this “herstory” making show.
The Morning Show: The New Apple TV+ Show Starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon
By Mary Burdick and Julia French
In November, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon’s much-anticipated show, The Morning Show is being released onto our screens through Apple TV+. The Morning Show tackles controversial ideas highlighted by the #MeToo movement by exploring the hidden gender barriers within entertainment workplaces. The pair has come a long way since their sisterly meetings at Central Perk when they co-acted in hit series Friends in the early 2000s. As a matter of fact, The Morning Show marks Aniston’s major re-entrance to TV since Friends in 2004, and also the pair’s first joint project since Witherspoon guest-starred on the NBC comedy. While Friends was very popular, viewers believe that this show would also be perfect for anyone and everyone.
The show’s idea came to light when several women in the news field were getting driven off programs for sexist reasons such as being “too old” at merely age 39 (Jane Pauley). Witherspoon was disgusted by the act of influential women of entertainment being screwed unfairly in the public’s eye and went on to say, “I was astounded by how honest a lot of female anchors were with myself and Jen. I think most people would find it shocking that women in that position, of what we perceive as power, are looked at as expendable.” Both Reese and Jennifer see the problems with the treatment of females in the news entertainment and find it quite disturbing.
After becoming inspired and planning out the upcoming show, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon presented The Morning Show to Apple in an attempt to find it a fitting home. With the all-star producers and ingenious idea, the show took off, and by March 2019, the technical school powerhouse declared it was most definitely entering the streaming world, and the show was on its way. One benefit of proposing the idea to Apple + was that the fresh TV show would be streaming from a fresh streaming company, a hopeful attempt for both parties involved. The TV streaming program offered two ten-episode seasons before beginning to shoot, and Witherspoon and Aniston snatched the opportunity.
As the show progressed and current news was released, the two producers took it upon themselves to continuously update the plot to align with very current gender frustrations and issues within the entertainment field. So much so, that the original idea presented to Apple was actually very different than the show that is being released soon. While we know that each actress will perform unique characters modeled after real-life women newscasters, we are very excited to watch the show when it hits our screens on November 1st! Here’s what we know about the pilot:
The sun is not even up in the big apple town when everything starts to go downhill: when after fifteen years of co-hosting with Alex Levy, Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) has been laid-off because of pressed allegations of sexual misconduct. To highlight the issue of sexual assault, the show finds it a necessity to display the issue within the series to reflect what’s happening in our current news field.
