Shaboozey proved that there are way more colors in his musical palette than “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” when he took the stage at the 2024 Country Music Association Awards on Wednesday (Nov. 20). The singer, whose signature song has straddled the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for 18 weeks so far — snagging the title for the longest-running No. 1 on the chart this decade and second place all time — dipped into his bag for the pensive “Highway,” the latest single from his smash Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going LP.
Seated on a stool on a smoke-shrouded set made up to look like the outside of a country honky tonk, the singer cut a striking figure in jeans and a lime green fringed jacket with bedazzled lapels and accents. “I see dead ends, but we’re still goin’ strong/ We’ve been headin’ down a one-way street, but it feel like it’s wrong/ Movin’ like a freight train, gettin’ tired of chuggin’ alone,” he sang over acoustic guitars and a lonesome fiddle.
As he leaned into the foreboding chorus — “I might die on the highway/ With all my regrets/ I’ve been driving for miles and miles and miles, I can’t see where it ends” — the singer, who was up for new artist of the year and single of the year for “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” gave the crowd what they came for mid-song when he made a hard turn into his signature hit.
“CMAs can we turn this place into the greatest dive bar in the world tonight?” he asked as the crowd began to clap and sing along, with many jumping to their feet as a group of line dancers filled the stage and the ubiquitous chorus came around. Keith Urban was not immune, as the cameras caught him mouthing along to the line about the party down of Fifth Street.
The celebration just kept amping up, with a cowboy pulling off impressive moves with his lariat and a dancer doing a back round-off as the song came to a close, and Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena crowd couldn’t help but raise their glasses to one of the genre’s rising superstars.