54th Annual Country Music Association Awards

Courtesy of Billboard.^[18]

• As the top nominee with seven nods, Miranda Lambert overtakes Reba McEntire as the most nominated woman in CMA history, with 55 total nominations to McEntire's 51. Lambert is now the fourth most-nominated artist behind Brad Paisley (58), Alan Jackson (81) and George Strait (83).
• Additionally, with Lambert's nominations for Album, Single and Song of the Year, she matches Jackson (1990, 1991, 1993 and 2002) as the only artist in CMA history to be nominated in all three categories four times (after previously sweeping the categories in 2010, 2014 and 2017). She also ties Paisley as the second most-nominated artist in the Single of the Year category with 8 nominations behind Strait's nine.
• Keith Urban's Entertainer of the Year nod brings his career total to 13 nominations, second only to Strait's 19.
• Lambert and Underwood's nominations for Entertainer of the Year marks the first time that two women have been nominated in the category at the same time since 1979 when Crystal Gayle and Barbara Mandrell were nominated. It is also worth noting that Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks were both nominated in 2000, but Lambert and Underwood is the first time that two solo women have been nominated since Gayle and Mandrell.^[19]
• Lambert, Morris and Barrett's nominations for Single of the Year also mark the first time three women have been nominated in the category since 1994 when Mary Chapin Carpenter, Patty Loveless and Reba McEntire were all featured.
• Andress, Barrett and Pearce's nominations for New Artist of the Year mark the first time three female artists have been nominated in the category since 1999 when Sara Evans, Chely Wright and eventual winner Jo Dee Messina were nominated. Additionally, Jimmie Allen's nomination in the category is the first for an African American artist since Darius Rucker won in 2009.
• Brooks & Dunn's 21'st Vocal Duo of the Year nomination extends their lead as the highest nominated act in that category.
• For the first time since the 1977 CMA Awards, all five Single of the Year nominees reached the top thirty on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart.
• "10,000 Hours" is the fourth collaboration with a pop star to be nominated for Single of the Year, following Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias' "To All the Girls I've Loved Before", Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson's "Don't You Wanna Stay" and Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line's "Meant to Be".

On July 30, 2020, Garth Brooks announced that he wanted his name to be permanently out of contention for Entertainer of the Year.^[20] After he won the 2019 Entertainer of the Year award, it caused a social media firestorm; many fans and artists believed Carrie Underwood or Eric Church deserved to win the award over Brooks. Brooks stated that after the last win, that it was "not that fun, to tell you the truth." As he absorbed the backlash after the November awards show, Brooks said, he couldn't shake the sentiment expressed in one of the tweets he read: "It said, 'Hey man, this guy, why doesn't he step down and just [leave] the entertainer for the next generation?'" He said he realized that taking his name out of the running was his only way forward. The timing of his announcement came just two days before the second round of voting begins for the annual awards, "I'm very grateful for the time that I've got to go [win]," he said, but now, "somebody else needs to hold that." According to a statement released July 30, 2020 by the Country Music Association, "The long-standing CMA Awards rules do not allow individuals to remove themselves from the balloting process at any point."

In 2021, Brooks restated that his position on receiving a nomination for Entertainer of the Year still stands.

After airing, the CMA Awards received criticism from artists Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires for failing to mention John Prine who had died in April following complications from COVID-19 as well as Billy Joe Shaver and Jerry Jeff Walker who both died in October, with Isbell noting that he and Shires had returned their CMA membership cards in protest. A statement from Prine's label Oh Boy Records read "we're disappointed John won't be a part of the CMA award show tonight. Country music was both the inspiration and foundation for his songwriting and performing. While there may be a number of artists who have had more commercial success than John, there are very few who achieved more artistically".^[21][22]