Let’s Go Girls! Shania Twain, Lainey Wilson, and Kacey Musgraves Take Vegas for the ACM Awards
“This is Las Vegas. Bring it on!” said Shania Twain ahead of her inaugural time hosting the 61st annual Academy of Country Music Awards, which has just traded its three-year run in Frisco, Texas for the bright lights of Sin City.
Reported by Vogue.
The 61st Academy of Country Music Awards didn't just move cities — it transformed. After three years in Frisco, Texas, the show landed in Las Vegas with a full commitment to spectacle, and country music's biggest names showed up ready to match the energy. According to Vogue, host Shania Twain set the tone before a single sequin hit the stage: "Every outfit I'm picking out, I'm thinking, 'Now it's gotta be a notch higher. We need drama here — the good kind!'" Las Vegas as a backdrop isn't a suggestion. It's a directive.
The weekend opened with more intention than glitter, though. The third annual I'm Just Me: A Charley Pride Celebration of Inclusion brunch honored the trailblazing legacy of the first Black artist to hit number one on the country charts. This year's honorees included singer-songwriter Mōriah, who framed the moment with clarity: "Charley Pride paved the way for artists like myself to bring our culture, our stories, and our experiences into country music." The brunch was a reminder that the genre's transformation isn't accidental — it's being actively built, year by year, name by name.
The Carpet, the Ceremony, the Clean Sweep
By Saturday, the red carpet felt less like an industry event and more like a very fashionable family reunion — snakeskin boots, bolo ties, teased hair, sequins, and dense desert heat. Kelsea Ballerini arrived in gilded Roberto Cavalli from the Spring Summer 2026 collection. Stella Lefty and Carter Faith both leaned vintage Ralph Lauren — 1999 and 2013, respectively. Newly married Lainey Wilson, just one week post-wedding, declared Vegas her honeymoon with husband Devlin Hodges beside her. The mood was loose, warm, and buzzing with a shared prediction: Ella Langley was going to sweep.
She did. Langley collected award after award, closing the night deadpan and radiant in Dolce & Gabbana, telling Vogue she felt like "the spinning wheel of death on a MacBook — crashing out, in the best possible way." Her Female Artist of the Year acceptance moved her to tears. The moment carried extra weight in a year when female artists outpaced male artists in ACM nominations for the first time ever. Twain didn't mince words about it: "It's about time — women are just more glamorous." She also pushed back on any narrative of overnight success: Langley, she noted, has always been there. The industry just finally caught up.
Country music has long resisted the idea that it can be many things at once — gritty and dreamy, traditional and boundary-dissolving, honky-tonk and high fashion — but this weekend in Las Vegas made a convincing case that it already is, and the women leading it right now are doing so without apology.
Read the original at Vogue.
