Garth Brooks, 7-time CMA Entertainer of the Year, no longer wants prestigious award

Legendary musician Garth Brooks said Wednesday he no longer wants country music’s most prestigious award.

Brooks said in a Facebook live stream “it’s time for somebody else” to win Country Music Association’s coveted Entertainer of the Year award. He has won the award seven times, including three of the last four years.

“The last thing I want to do is seem ungrateful,” he said, according to country music blog The Boot. “But it’s time for somebody else to hold that award ... ‘cause they’re all out there busting their butts.”

When Brooks won the award last year, many people felt it should have gone to Carrie Underwood or Eric Church, The Tennessean reported.

The Washington Post reported on the backlash from last year’s award, saying the CMA’s Facebook and Instagram pages “were inundated with enraged comments.”

A tweet Brooks received, asking “Why doesn’t this guy step down?” prompted Brooks to remove himself from the category, CMT said.

“You pretty much saw what happened after the CMAs, all the way through the new year. It got a little — it wasn’t fun, let’s put it that way,” Brooks said in the live stream, according to The Boot. “But there was one tweet that really stuck in my head.”

Brooks won his first Entertainer of the Year award in 1991 and has won it more than any other artist.

This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Garth Brooks, 7-time CMA Entertainer of the Year, no longer wants prestigious award."