Miranda Lambert, who remains the winningest artist in ACM Awards history, returned to the ACM stage on Thursday for a powerful two-song performance and had quite the surprise up her sleeve: a special guest appearance from newly crowned ACM New Female Artist of the Year, Ella Langley.
Lambert first took the stage to perform her latest single, “Run.” Donning a hot pink fringe jacket and jeans with coordinating hot pink embellishments, the Texas native delivered a goosebumps-inducing rendition of the emotional ballad.
“Run” is a deeply personal song Miranda Lambert wrote a decade ago, but as she recently told Kelleigh Bannen on Today’s Country Radio, it took years before she felt emotionally ready to record it.
“I wasn’t ever ready to perform it until now… That’s what songs are for, and you may not be ready at that one time to sing about something really raw or sing about alimony. You might be going through divorce or whatever, you know what I mean? At the time it might not be funny or at the time it might feel too raw, but then it can come back around,” she said. “And it’s an admission of human error too. It’s an apology… But it’s also a resolve.”
After performing “Run,” which is featured on her latest album, Post Cards From Texas, Lambert surprised the audience by welcoming Ella Langley to join her for a performance of her career-changing single, “Kerosene.”
“I cannot believe this, but my very first album, Kerosene, turned 20 years old this year,” Lambert shared from the stage before introducing Langley.
Langley threw it back to 2005 by rocking a “Mama Tried” tank top and jeans on stage — a tribute to Miranda Lambert’s iconic “Kerosene” music video look.
The crowd went wild as the pair of female artists joined forces for the fiery performance.
Lambert and Langley have formed a tight friendship in recent months. Langley previously opened up about their friendship in an interview with Country Now and admitting that she is one of her longtime inspirations.
“I mean, just growing up listening to Miranda Lambert, she hates when I say that, but she’s been an inspiration for me. I think Miranda has always just done what she wanted to do and the way that she’s wanted to do it. And she doesn’t really take a lot of crap and she kind of just is herself a hundred percent of the time,” she noted. “And I look up to women like that and we definitely need a lot of ’em like that.”
This performance was just one of many memorable moments that took place on the ACM Awards stage. Lainey Wilson, Alan Jackson, Blake Shelton, Kelsea Ballerini, Zach Top, Eric Church, and more also took the stage throughout the night.
Several collaborations also took place, including Jelly Roll teaming up with Shaboozey for “Amen,” Cody Johnson and Brooks & Dunn joining forces to perform “Red Dirt Road,” and Rascal Flatts and Backstreet Boys uniting for a show-closing performance of “What Hurts the Most,” “I Dare You,” “Larger Than Life,” and “Life is a Highway.”
Additionally, Lambert returned to the stage with Reba McEntire and Lainey Wilson to debut their song “Trailblazer.”
Reba McEntire hosted the two-and-a-half-hour, commercial-free event, which streamed live to a global audience in over 240 countries and territories on Prime Video and the Amazon Music channel on Twitch, direct from the Dallas Cowboys’ world headquarters at The Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
The post WATCH: Miranda Lambert Surprises With Ella Langley ‘Kerosene’ Duet After Emotional ‘Run’ At ACM Awards appeared first on Country Now.
