Twenty-five years ago, hijacked planes crashed into New York’s World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving 2,977 people murdered and nearly 6,000 more wounded in the worst terrorist attack on American soil in history.
Americans reacted with a myriad of emotions — shock, horror, anger, sorrow and fear — but many also rallied together in unity and a show of support for the American military and each other.
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Country music artists were among the first to put that range of complex emotions into song. Two country releases in particular seemed to capture the yin and yang of American reactions to the tragedy: While Toby Keith‘s “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American)” seethed with righteous anger and intense patriotism with lines like “We’ll put a boot in your a–- it’s the American way,” Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” focused on those who reacted in quieter ways, with lines such as “Did you go to a church and hold hands with some strangers/ Stand in line and give your own blood?/ Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family/ Thank God you had somebody to love?” Furthermore, songs like “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly” by Aaron Tippin rendered a new meaning following the tragedy, having written the song more than two years beforehand.
Here, Billboard looks back at some of the country songs inspired by “that September day,” as Alan Jackson sang.
Carín León told his fans he tried everything he could to make it to his fourth residency show at the Sphere in Las Vegas on Thursday night (Sept. 10), but a series of “aircraft malfunctions” left him far away from the venue at showtime. In an Instagram Story (translated into English), the singer wrote, “Due to an unexpected mishap during my move, and always putting everyone’s safety first, we unfortunately have to reschedule tonight’s show at Sphere.”
León assured disappointed fans — who were reportedly in their seats awaiting the start of the show when the news was announced over the arena’s sound system — that their tickets will be valid for a new date — Sept. 15, 2027 — and if they can’t make it then they can get a refund at the point of purchase in the next 30 days. “I know all the effort, excitement, and desire that many brought to be here tonight, and I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” he wrote. “Thank you for your patience, for understanding and for all the affection you always make me reach. See you the soonest my people.”
In an accompanying video, he explained that he and his band could not make it to the show due to “aircraft malfunctions,” describing trying to board two different planes Thursday afternoon, both of which he said had issues that prevented them from taking off, including one with a brake failure and another with a steering issue.
“We had to prioritize the safety of the people and the pilots, so we weren’t allowed to fly. The authorities wouldn’t let us,” León said in the video. “I sincerely apologize from the bottom of my heart and want to reaffirm our love for you. This isn’t a lack of commitment on our part. Things simply didn’t go as we had hoped, and I stand here feeling deeply embarrassed.”
The venue also posted a statement that read: “Due to an unexpected transportation issue, tonight’s Carín show at Sphere is postponed.” At press time, a spokesperson for León had not returned Billboard‘s request for further comment on the last-minute show cancellation. A video posted by record_mexico featured what appeared to be footage of disgruntled fans marching and chanting in the lobby and an announcer breaking the bad news to a packed house in both Spanish and English to a round of boos.
León, 37, became the first Latin artist to book a residency at the Sphere, kicking off his planned seven-show run last week and announcing earlier in the day on Thursday that he is planning a return in 2027. The next run of shows produced by AEG will find the singer touching down again at the immersive Las Vegas theater on Sept. 16, 17 and 18 of next year during Mexico’s Independence Day celebrations.
During León’s first sold-out night at the Sphere on Sept. 4 he was joined by country singer Cody Johnson and Mexican rock band the Warning. León is booked to play the venue again on Friday night (Sept. 11), as well as Saturday (Sept. 12) and Sunday (Sept. 13).
One of America’s most beloved and long-running competition shows, Dancing With the Stars, begins its 35th season on Sept. 15 and 16 on ABC and Disney +. Though every season brings a new slate of stars — including Ciara Miller, Julia Stiles, Amber Glenn and Jenna Dewan for this fall’s cast — Dancing With the Stars has had one constant over the last 17 seasons: music director Ray Chew.
Chew, leading a 14 piece band, has played an instrumental role in modernizing the music of the show, taking it from a classic ballroom feel to one that reacts in real time to pop culture trends. He’s led his crew of musicians through a recreation of hit Broadway musical Wicked, a night of TikTok viral hits and just about every genre, tempo and style.
To pull it off is no easy feat. DWTS is shot in real time, and the music director tells Billboard his average show day begins at 3:30 AM, and doesn’t end until the show wraps that evening. Throughout the week, his team is also racing against the clock to create arrangements for songs the choreographers are picking in real time, a process he lovingly refers to as “unbaking the cake,” or trying to sleuth out each element of the song so that his musicians can rework it in a matter of days.
Meanwhile, the show’s music supervisor, Nancy Severinsen, is working to clear the rights for the songs, which, as Chew explains, doesn’t always work. “To clear one song, it could have two writers, [or] it could even have seven publishers,” Chew explains. “You got to contact everybody, and everybody’s not waiting around on their phone to be contacted. Some of the music clearance happen right up until the last minute.” He notes that even on the Wicked night they have to rework their original plans to satisfy the vision of the original rights holders of the music.
Still, Chew takes it all stride — he knows how to work under the pressure of live TV. He got his start in the band for Saturday Night Live back in the 1980s, and then has gone on to music direct everything from the Grammy Awards, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miss Universe, the Emmys, the BET Awards, American Idol, Showtime at the Apollo and more. Dancing With the Stars, however, he says is like a “unicorn” for live TV.
As using live musicians becomes increasingly less common, the dance competition is a bright spot, which one of the largest, if not the largest, live bands on screen today. “It’s a blessing,” Chew says. “It’s a blessing.”
To discuss how the show comes together every week, and the important, but little understood, role that music directors hold, Chew joined Billboard’s music industry podcast On the Record.
Watch the episode on YouTube, or read an condensed and edited version of the conversation below.
Billboard:Can you walk me through the timeline of a week on Dancing With the Stars?
Ray Chew: Our show day is Tuesday. Wednesday is when we get our assignments. Now, it would be great if we could get in front of this a lot more, but we can’t because it’s a contest. We don’t know who may or may not be on the show. So, yes, they may know what they want to do, but we may not know that they’re going to do it. So Wednesday, I get the assignment. I take a song, a very popular song, and I have to deconstruct it. The process I actually call “unbake the cake.” I have to figure out what’s in that sauce, what’s in that gravy, what makes that really move and tick. Why do people love it? What’s that signature sound that you can’t be without? Nobody’s handing us these ingredients. We have to go in and figure out what’s in that song. Is there a special sound in there? A special synthesizer? What’s happening? And in particular, the vocal. So for the vocalist, we have to do what we call vocal shaping. All right, so if we have a song that is very popular, you don’t want to be out of character. You’ve got to meet the character. Sometimes it’s in all the nuance.
So my prep week starts on Wednesday. We get the song list on Wednesday. At the same time, we have to deconstruct the song. So, 16 songs, right? You have to go through them one by one. That takes hours and hours of work, just trying to take one song and figure out what’s going on in there. Now we have to start doing arrangements for those songs, and that takes days. So we have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to prepare everything we need to do, and then Saturday we have a full-band rehearsal.
On Saturday we have our band—the singers, musicians, everybody—assembled in the ballroom. We have to go through all the songs and make sure that everything is correct. We also have to make sure our audio team hears all the things, because a Frank Sinatra song is not going to sound the same as a Katy Perry song.
How have you seen the show evolve since you got started with it?
Well, the audience has certainly gotten a lot younger and a lot more engaged. I think when I started with the show, it had already been running for 10 years, so it had a very established audience, and it was really a ballroom-type sound with a very traditional presentation. When I came in, I think it was at a turning point where they really wanted to contemporize this stuff. We had to say, “Hey, man, we’ve got to talk to a younger audience. We’ve got to do some songs that are younger and bouncier and have a different thing.” And we’ve evolved into that completely now.
You guys are now also airing Dancing With the Stars on streaming services. Does that impact how the run of show goes on the day of?
Not for us. But two seasons ago — or three seasons ago, during the pandemic — we had to reconfigure everything just to get the show presented at all, because everybody had to be in different quadrants. We couldn’t be in the same space. It was a lot, even just trying to get the show going. That’s when they started doing the streaming. Now that we have a dual package to present, the streaming doesn’t necessarily impact what we do. We do what we do, and then they stream it.
On the day of the performance, what is that timeline like for you?
Well, it starts with the night before. I have to go to bed at 9 o’clock, which is totally against my whole body. But it’s because I have to get up at 3:30. Then we have to be on set at 5 or 5:30 sometimes, I have to allow time because you never know. You’re expecting no traffic at 4 in the morning, but you never know. We have our entire music team, which is 14 musicians and singers, and we’re expected to be on. When I say “on,” I mean it has to sound as live and as great as it can. You can’t say, “well, we’re waking up and we know we’re going to get it going.” No, you get it going. You’re going at 5:30.
We start at 5:30. We do a rehearsal of some of the revisions they may have wanted. They’ll tell us, “Hey, I need a little of this over the weekend,” so we have notes, and we’ll start with that. Then the dance teams come in at 7. We’ll do a camera block with them until about 12, and then at 12 we take a lunch break. We do a dress rehearsal from 1 to 4:30, and then we go on air live at 5:30.
It seems like a luxury in TV today to get to work with 14 musicians — live musicians — week after week. I could imagine some productions just wanting to cut costs and be like, “well, a master recording is good enough. We’ll just license that.” Have you seen TV shows change over time in their willingness to hire live musicians?
This is the dinosaur. Well, I don’t want to say dinosaur — It’s a unicorn. We’re a unicorn because I don’t see any other show that do this. Some of the other shows continue to have live music, but it’s not 14 musicians. All credit goes to the fact that there’s an appetite for this sound. The audience is loving it. When I went to the Dancing With the Stars convention, the fans were coming up to me. I was like, “wow, this is beautiful.”
The comment I got most was, “We love what you do,” because anybody can play a master recording. We hear that all the time. We’re bringing a different life to the song.
Have you ever had a musician who you’ve covered on the show reach out to you and say thanks, or that they loved the cover you performed on the show?
Yeah, I’ve had that a lot. We did Janet Jackson week, and Janet Jackson also made a video appearance, but the producers of that project are Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. They’re very special. I know these guys, and I was like, I am not going to not make — by the way, I give the same attention to everything, but I was like, “you know what? I know these guys are watching, so let me make sure every little thing that I can think of is as good as possible.” The good news is that they contacted me afterward. Jimmy Jam said, “Hey man, you did us right on that stuff.”
Ella Langley is the leading nominee for the 60th annual CMA Awards, with nine nods. That ties the record for the most nods in one year by a female artist. That record was first set by Miranda Lambert in 2010 and then matched by Lambert in 2014 and equaled by Lainey Wilson in 2023. These tallies are just one off the all-time record of 10, set by Alan Jackson in 2002.
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Vying for the night’s highest honor, entertainer of the year, are Combs, Johnson, Langley, Stapleton and Wilson.
Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas,” which has logged 21 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, more than any other non-holiday hit in the chart’s 68-year history, is this year’s only work that is nominated for single, song and music video of the year.
Female artists account for four of the five nominees for single of the year for the first time in CMA history. Langley is nominated for both “Choosin’ Texas” and “Be Her.” She’s just the eighth artist in CMA history to have two nominations in the same year in that category. She’s the first to do it since Wilson scored in 2023 with “Heart Like a Truck” and HARDY’s “Wait in the Truck,” on which she was featured.
Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You” and Wilson’s “Somewhere Over Laredo” are also nominated in the category, along with one single by a male artist – Cody Johnson’s “The Fall.”
Fun Fact: “I Knew It, I Knew You” appears to be the front-runner for the Oscar for best original song. “Somewhere Over Laredo” interpolates the melody of “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz, which won in that category in 1940.
Jay Joyce produced “Somewhere Over Laredo.” It’s his 14th nomination for single of the year, which puts him second only to Tony Brown for the most nominations in that category as a producer. Brown, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2025, has had 16.
Miranda Lambert lands her 19th nomination for female vocalist of the year, which surpasses Reba McEntire for the most nominations in that category. McEntire tallied 18 from 1983 to 2017.
Shane McAnally is nominated for song of the year for cowriting Musgraves’ witty “Dry Spell.” It’s his 11th nomination in the category, which enables him to break out of a tie for the most nods in the category with Alan Jackson (10). Jackson won twice in the category, for “Chattahoochee” and “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).” McAnally has so far won just once, for co-writing Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow.”
Little Big Town now has the longest consecutive streak of nominations for vocal group of the year. They have been on the final ballot every year since 2006—21 years in a row.
This year’s nominees for new artist of the year are Avery Anna, Carter Faith, Emily Ann Roberts, Tucker Wetmore and Stephen Wilson Jr. It’s the second year in a row that Wetmore and Wilson have been nominated in the category. (The CMA allows artists two tries in this category.)
Jack Antonoff, who has won 14 Grammys, receives his first CMA nomination as a co-producer of Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You.”
First-time CMA Awards nominees, besides those already named, are Smith Ahnquist, Tim Cofield, Austin Goodloe, Muscadine Bloodline, Caylee Robillard, Laura Sisk, Joybeth Taylor, Thelma & James and Ben West.
The 60th annual CMA Awards, hosted by Wilson, broadcasts live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, Nov. 18 (8:00 – 11:00 p.m. ET) on ABC, Disney+ and next day on Hulu. Wilson will become the first female artist to solo-host the show twice. Dolly Parton and McEntire each solo-hosted once.
Nominees for this year’s CMA Awards were revealed first on ABC’s Good Morning America, then via livestream on CMA’s official YouTube channel.
Winners of the 60th annual CMA Awards will be determined in a final round of voting by voting-eligible CMA professional members. The third and final ballot will be emailed on Thursday, Oct. 1. Voting for the CMA Awards final ballot ends Tuesday, Oct. 27 (6:00 p.m./CT). All balloting is tabulated by the professional services organization, Deloitte.
The 60th annual CMA Awards is a production of the Country Music Association. Robert Deaton is the executive producer, Alan Carter is the director, and Jon Macks is the head writer.
Tickets for the 60th annual CMA Awards are on sale now here.
Here are the final nominees for the 60th annual CMA Awards.
Entertainer of the year
Luke Combs
Cody Johnson
Ella Langley
Chris Stapleton
Lainey Wilson
Single of the year
Award goes to artist, producer(s) and mix engineer(s)
“Be Her” – Ella Langley; Producers: Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Ben West; Mix Engineer: Dave Clauss
“Choosin’ Texas” – Ella Langley; Producers: Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Ben West; Mix Engineer: Dave Clauss
“I Knew It, I Knew You” – Taylor Swift; Producers: Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift; Mix Engineer: Laura Sisk
“Somewhere Over Laredo” – Lainey Wilson; Producer: Jay Joyce; Mix Engineers: Jason Hall, Jay Joyce
“The Fall” – Cody Johnson; Producer: Trent Willmon; Mix Engineer: Jack Clarke
Album of the year
Award goes to artist, producer(s) and mix engineer(s)
Ain’t In It For My Health – Zach Top; Producer: Carson Chamberlain; Mix Engineer: Matt Rovey
Dandelion – Ella Langley; Producers: Devin Dawson, Ella Langley, Miranda Lambert, Ben West; Mix Engineer: Dave Clauss
Middle of Nowhere – Kacey Musgraves; Producers: Ian Fitchuk, Luke Laird, Kacey Musgraves, Daniel Tashian; Mix Engineers: Serban Ghenea, Konrad Snyder
Parker McCollum – Parker McCollum; Producers: Frank Liddell, Eric Masse; Mix Engineer: Eric Masse
The Way I Am – Luke Combs; Producers: Luke Combs, Chip Matthews, Jonathan Singleton; Mix Engineer: Chip Matthews
Song of the year
Award goes to songwriter(s)
“Be Her”; Songwriters: Smith Ahnquist, Michael Hardy, Ella Langley, Jordan Schmidt
South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been talking up their first feature film since the bonkers 2004 puppet action spectacle Team America: World Police for a while now. So, why haven’t we seen their reportedly $100 million live-action follow-up to 1997’s bonkers sex comedy Orgazmo more than a year since its original release date came and went?
“We take full responsibility for the schedule delay of this movie,” Stone and Parker said in a statement to the site. “We apologize to our partners at pgLang and Paramount and we appreciate their patience. South Park and life’s circumstances have gotten in the way but we still believe in the project.”
According to The Ankler, back in 2021, a group of Paramount executives visited the offices of the duo’s Park County production company to read the script written by South Park veteran Vernon Chatman (Wonder Showzen). The plan at that point was for the movie to be directed by Parker and produced by Stone, Kendrick Lamar and his business partner, Dave Free. Paramount reportedly picked up the movie in January 2022, with then-Paramount Pictures boss Brian Robbins saying in 2024 that the script was “one of the funniest and most original” ones he’d ever read.
The film focused on a young Black reenactor at a historical slave plantation museum in the Midwest who yells at tourists and fights with the town’s racist mayor — played by Parker — was reportedly slated to go into production in the summer of 2024. Unnamed sources told the site that the film also features previously unreleased, original music from Lamar.
The original release date, July 4, 2025, was then pushed back to March 20 of this year and then, in November, removed from the studio’s release schedule. At press time, no additional information was available on a potential release date.
Mother nature is the only force that can slow down AC/DC. The veteran Australian hard rockers were slated to play one of the last shows on their two-year, 90-date Power Up tour at Toronto’s Rogers Stadium on Sept. 16, but on Wednesday night (Sept. 9) the stadium announced that the show could not go on after the venue suffered major damage in a storm last week.
“We regret to announce that AC/DC’s show scheduled for Sept. 16, 2026 at Rogers Stadium in Toronto has been canceled due to damage the venue sustained following a severe weather event,” read a statement from the venue on X.
“The safety of our fans, artists, crew and venue staff remains our highest priority. Every effort was made to find potential solutions for the show to move forward in Toronto, but unfortunately we were unable to find an alternative venue that could accommodate everyone,” it continued, noting that fans who bought tickets through Ticketmaster will automatically receive a refund to their original payment method.
The statement revealed that after a “thorough assessment” of the stadium after last week’s extreme weather event — which resulted in wide swaths of seats getting tossed, twisted and ripped from their moorings and other damage to the venue — there was no way to stage the show. It described a “suspected microburst in the area” from a “100-year storm” that included extreme winds and heavy rainfall.
“In the days since, engineers have conducted a thorough assessment of the venue in coordination with the City of Toronto,” read the statement attributed to Kevin Mahoney, the DTN risk communicator team lead and an AMS-certified consulting meteorologist and the venue’s on-site meteorologist. “That work has determined that sections of the venue impacted by the storm will need to be removed and rebuilt.”
Wayne Zronik, president of business operations for Live Nation Canada also weighed in with a statement in which he said that canceling a concert is “never a decision we want to make.” He acknowledged that doing so is disappointing to everyone who was looking forward to AC/DC closing out the venue’s summer season. “Safety has to come first,” he said. “Our teams have been working closely with the city and our partners to understand the storm damage and what needs to happen next. The right decision is to make the time to remove and rebuild the affected parts of the stadium to ensure it is ready to welcome fans next summer.”
There are three gigs left on AC/DC’s tour, including a Saturday (Sept. 12) stop at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal, a Sept. 25 stop at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. and the final show at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Sept. 29.
