Walker Hayes Keeps the 2022 CMT Awards Party Going With Dance-Inducing Live ‘AA’
No one brings a party quite like Walker Hayes, and the Alabama native did just that at the 2022 CMT Awards with an addictive performance of his current single, "AA."
Sporting a simple flannel shirt over a white tee and black jeans, Hayes brought his fun attitude to the CMT Awards stage, getting the audience swaying with every lyric of "AA." Turning up the excitement of the performance were dancers, who joined Hayes in grooving.
And yes, there were also plenty of fans of the song in the audience, including none other than Thomas Rhett, who was shown giving Hayes a standing ovation at the end of the performance.
On the heels of his smash hit "Fancy Like," Hayes wrote the song "AA" alongside Shane McAnally and Luke Laird, hitting on "anxieties as a dad, his love for his wife Laney, and his own journey with sobriety."
Like "Fancy Like," this song lives on Hayes' current album, Country Stuff The Album, which finds him collaborating with Carly Pearce, Jake Owen and Lori McKenna.
“I’ve been waiting so long to put out a project like this,” says Hayes about the album. “It has everything I love from the fun of ‘Fancy Like’ to the more personal lyrics in ‘AA.’ As an artist, it’s such a unique thing to be able to share all the different versions of you in a project, and that’s really what I tried to do here.”
Hayes was nominated for Male Video of the Year during Monday's CMT Music Awards, alongside Rhett, Cody Johnson, Eric Church, Kane Brown, Luke Bryan and Luke Combs. The prize ultimately went to Johnson.
The 2022 CMT Music Awards aired live from Nashville on CBS. Kelsea Ballerini, Anthony Mackie and Brown co-hosted the show; Brown was a last-minute addition to that hosting lineup after Ballerini received a positive COVID-19 test and had to re-work her hosting duties so that she could attend from home.