Chris Stapleton Goes for a Ninth CMA Male Vocalist Award

Chris Stapleton performing in concert with his band.

When Chris Stapleton and Miranda Lambert sang A Song to Sing at the CMA Awards in November 2025, the stage was dressed in disco balls and golden light, a roller-rink set that pointed back to an older kind of country duet. Eleven months on, the same recording is back on the CMA ballot, one of four nominations Chris Stapleton carries into the 60th CMA Awards in Nashville on 18 November. The headline nomination is Male Vocalist of the Year, a category he has won a record eight times.

A ninth win would extend a record he already holds. The other three nominations show the rest of his year, a duet recorded with a friend, a music video, and a place in the night’s top category, Entertainer of the Year.

Four Nominations, Four Kinds of Work

The Country Music Association announced its nominees on Thursday 10 September, Taste of Country reported. Stapleton’s four are Entertainer of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, Musical Event of the Year for A Song to Sing with Lambert, and Music Video of the Year for White Horse. That tally puts him level with Cody Johnson and Stephen Wilson Jr., who also earned four each, according to ABC.

Each category rewards a different part of the job. Entertainer of the Year looks at the whole year on the road and on record. Male Vocalist is about the voice. Musical Event recognises a collaboration, and Music Video credits the director as well as the artist: ABC lists Running Bear as the director of the White Horse video. Taken together, the four nominations describe a singer whose year was spread across stage, studio and screen rather than concentrated in one hit.

The Male Vocalist Record He Already Holds

Stapleton holds the record in the Male Vocalist category with eight wins, and a ninth would extend it, ABC noted. The field this year is Luke Combs, Cody Johnson, Stapleton, Zach Top and Stephen Wilson Jr. Wilson Jr. is also nominated for New Artist of the Year, which makes the category a meeting point between established names and newer ones.

That spread is the story of the category in one line. The Male Vocalist award is where country marks the voices it is listening to most closely, and the presence of two newer names beside three established ones shows the format weighing its next generation against its current one. Stapleton’s eight wins are the benchmark every other name on the list is measured against.

Zach Top’s presence is notable for another reason. His album Ain’t In It for My Health is also nominated for Album of the Year, according to Taste of Country, alongside records from Ella Langley, Kacey Musgraves, Parker McCollum and Luke Combs. Male Vocalist this year sits next to an album category with a similar mix of established names and newer ones.

Where A Song to Sing Came From

The duet has a longer history than its release date suggests. A Song to Sing is Lambert and Stapleton’s first recorded collaboration, Billboard reported, although the two had shared stages and written songs together before. Dave Cobb produced it, and the single reached No. 20 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.

Billboard’s account of the 2025 CMA performance explains why the song keeps returning to award ballots. The duet, it wrote, gently brings to mind the easy-going manner Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers had when they performed Islands in the Stream, a song the pair sang at the CMA Awards in 1983. Rather than trying to out-sing each other, Lambert and Stapleton let their voices blend, an arrangement built on restraint rather than show.

The recording has collected recognition across the year. It was nominated for Best Country Song and Best Country Duo/Group Performance at the 68th Grammy Awards, and at the Academy of Country Music Awards it was up for Music Event, Song of the Year and Visual Media of the Year, uDiscover Music reported when the ACM nominations were announced in April. The CMA nomination for Musical Event is the next stop for a duet that has now been carried through a full awards season.

A Crowded Musical Event Category

The category Stapleton and Lambert are in is one of the strongest on the ballot. The other nominees are Kacey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert for Horses and Divorces, Ella Langley and Morgan Wallen for I Can’t Love You Anymore, Carly Pearce and Riley Green for If I Don’t Leave I’m Gonna Stay, and Hardy, Eric Church and Tim McGraw for McArthur.

Lambert appears twice in that list, which says something about her place in the format. According to ABC, her 2026 nominations give her 19 Female Vocalist of the Year nominations, the most of all time, and she is already the most-winning woman in CMA Awards history with 14 wins. At the Academy of Country Music Awards her total of 33 wins makes her the most decorated artist in that organisation’s history, uDiscover Music noted. A Song to Sing therefore pairs the most decorated woman in the CMA’s history with the man who holds the Male Vocalist record.

Entertainer of the Year and the Company He Keeps

The top award brings together five acts with very different paths. Stapleton is nominated alongside Luke Combs, Cody Johnson, Ella Langley and Lainey Wilson. Langley leads all nominees with nine nominations this year, and Lambert follows with seven, according to ABC.

Wilson has a record of her own in reach. ABC noted that she could become the first woman to win three Entertainer of the Year awards, and that she has a chance to become the second woman, after Lambert, to win Female Vocalist of the Year five years in a row. For Stapleton, Entertainer of the Year is the category that asks the broadest question about a career, and a place on a five-name shortlist that also includes the year’s most-nominated artist, Langley, confirms his standing in the format. It is not his first time in both of the big races either: at the 2025 ceremony he was nominated for Male Vocalist and Entertainer of the Year as well, Billboard noted, while Lambert was up for Female Vocalist.

How to Watch the 60th CMA Awards

The 60th Annual CMA Awards air live from Bridgestone Arena in Nashville on Wednesday 18 November on ABC and Disney+, with the show available on Hulu the next day, ABC reported. Lainey Wilson returns as host for a third consecutive year and a second year as solo host.

The ceremony is the 60th edition of the awards, and it returns to the same arena where Stapleton and Lambert performed A Song to Sing in 2025. If the duet wins Musical Event, it will be recognised in the room where Billboard first described it as a throwback to Parton and Rogers.

What the Ballot Says About the Tradition

Country’s awards season is partly a record of who is carrying the tradition forward, and this ballot shows several generations at once. MusicRoots.News recently looked at how Brandi Carlile became the first woman to sing a Ted Lasso theme, another case of a long-established voice finding a new audience, and Stapleton’s nominations sit in the same line.

Whether or not he wins on 18 November, the shape of Chris Stapleton’s year is already clear. A duet with Lambert that has been passed from the CMA stage to the Grammys and the ACMs, a music video credited to Running Bear, and a voice the Male Vocalist category has rewarded more often than any other. A ninth award would add one more line to a record that is already his.