Nashville Has Moving Moments From Honorees

Introducing her friend Sheryl Crow at Variety’s inaugural “Power of Women: Nashville” event Thursday, Maren Morris said, “She is a rare example of: Do meet your heroes.”

That was a theme that ran through the Music City event, which celebrated four of Nashville’s most empathetic and philanthropic stars, as well as a good number of behind-the-scenes creatives and industry leaders who count as fairly heroic themselves. It was a room full of a couple of hundred of the least disappointing people in show business.

Throughout the luncheon ceremony, honorees Kelsea Ballerini, Sheryl Crow, Mickey Guyton and Reba McEntire and their respective celebrity presenters shared a mutual appreciation for one another’s artistry, boldness, leadership and philanthropy. With emotions running high, they also shared a collective need for Kleenex. Tears were shed throughout the program, and when McEntire began to cry during her climactic acceptance speech, Guyton rushed from her seat to the dais, helpfully offering the tissue packet she’d utilized a few minutes before.

Some of that emotion had to do with women’s perpetual underdog status in this company town’s main business, country music, where it’s oft-stated that female singers have to work twice as hard to do half as well. It was Ballerini who brought up “Tomato-gate” — the brouhaha that developed in the 2010s when a country radio consultant publicly made a statement about how female artists should be played only sparingly, because they were the tomato in the salad that is country music, to the lettuce that men represent.

Ballerini, who has recently been out on her first arena headlining tour, spoke in her speech about her reaction to that viral comment. It was right when around when her first single was reaching the top 5 at radio “that Tomato-hate happened — remember? Yeah, me too. And I quickly became acquainted with the very real unbalanced nature for men and women in the landscape of country music. What I wanted to say then was: It’s a good thing I’m Italian, because the salads I prefer are a burrata or pasta salad, neither of which have lettuce.”

Not everyone being honored at the Lifetime-sponsored Power of Women: Nashville is part of the country music world; the longer list of honorees included people who are involved in film/TV and other entertainment media. And it also included rockers, like Crow.

“I’m actually not a country singer,” Crow clarified, setting out what distinguished her from the other three star honorees. “I’m not. In fact, I’m so old now that I’m sort of like… I don’t know what I am. But I love it,” she added, about her freedom from genre or most other imaging concerns. “It’s liberating, by God!” she beamed.

The lineup of presenters was as illustrious as the roster of headliners at the event. Besides Morris stepping up for Crow, Ballerini was introduced by recent duet partner Noah Kahan; McEntire got her introductory props from Lady A’s Hillary Scott (with the pregnant singer’s unborn child an additional presence on stage); and Guyton got her intro from an artist she mentored in the infancy of his career, Breland.

First up among those four teamings was Ballerini and Kahan, who recorded “Cowboys Cry Too” together. Something else they did together, Kahan revealed, was go to Dollywood just the other day.

“This last week, Kelsea and I were asked to leave Guy Fieri’s Flavor Town, in downtown Pigeon Forest, Tennessee. It was after a long day of riding roller coasters and eating foot-long corn dogs at Dollywood, where Kelsea spent time as a child growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee. As we were shamefully leaving the restaurant, I started to worry about writing the speech and how to truly capture Kelsey’s spirit and describe as a person who I’ve been so fortunate to come to know and to call friend and a collaborator.

“As we stumbled laughing out of those pearly gates into the abandoned parking lot,” Kahan continued, “I realized that what I love most about Kelsea is her joy for life. Getting to see her kindness up close to everyone she meets is when I started to realize what a special person she is. It’s very rare to meet someone who could write so beautifully about their life, their relationships, their memories, who also treats everyone she meets like they’ve known each other for years.” That quality, Kahan said, “extends to her partner” — Chase Stokes, who attended the event with Ballerini— “her friends, random strangers and corn dog salesman.”

Kahan also hailed “her work in the mental health space, particularly through the Feel Your Way Through Foundation,” through which he noted Ballerini has raised more than $700,000 for nonprofits. “As someone that’s struggled with my own mental health for many years,” he said, “it’s really encouraging to see someone who’s an artist with such talent and such demand dedicate so much of her time and hard for this cause.”

“Thank you, Noah,” said Ballerini, stepping to the mic. “I really do think singing ‘Cowboys Cry Too’ is the only reason that straight men that were dragged to my tour by their girlfriends and wives were able to endure my very glittery, emotional 90-minute show every night. So I owe you forever… One of the reasons I’m lucky enough to call Noah a friend is because of our shared love of Guy Fieri, (but also) aour belief in the value of destigmatizing mental health and helping facilitate conversations, resources and community around it. That’s the heart of our song,” she said, as well as of her and Kahan’s mutual foundations.

Ballerini noted she was there as a fangirl as well as honoree. “I am Ms. Sheryl Crow’s stan, and in her words, I also like a good beer buzz early in the morning, so I’m gonna do that now.” (In the interest of fairness, it was early afternoon by that point in the event’s wine tippling.)

Crow was on hand to support her environmental work, not mental health charities, but her appreciation for what others were espousing in that regard — including Guyton, who was also speaking up for a mental health charity — led her to go off-script.

“You guys are doing the work in mental health,” Crow said of Ballerini and Guyton. “You know, I had a boyfriend once that said I was crazier than a three-legged lizard on an icy pond,” she quipped.

More seriously, Crow said, “I have been in and out of therapy for what feels like the better part of my whole creative life, and it has been a lifesaver. And as I watch the person who was connected to the car that I donated do away with the hotline where kids can call who are feeling suicidal, I think the work of every artist who feels compelled to lift their voice into the fray to do what’s right for other people is so important.” That was a reference, of course, to Elon Musk, whose DOGE actions slashing longstanding social services led her to donate her Tesla for charity, in a move that stirred up his supporters.

“For me, I feel like the blessing is in the doing and the giving, and it’s not in the outcome,” Crow said. “And I feel like where we’re at now in our humanity is challenging, and it’s somewhat terrifying. But it is asking those of us who are connected to spirit, who are connected to nature, which for me is where I find God… Right now circumstances are asking us to use our spirits, and to use the drive that we had when we were little, when we saw somebody else fall down and we ran over them to them to pick them up. It’s asking us this moment to show up for people we’ll never meet in our whole lives, people whose circumstances are so totally different than ours, but that we feel we’re seeing something unfair (happening to). And there is a lot of it right now.”

McEntire was using her platform at the event to espouse for the downtrodden, too.

“When I found out I was being honored today, they asked me who to select for a charity that’s very important to me,” McEntire said. “If I had a superpower….” She stopped herself. “Okay, well, first, I wanna know what animals are thinking.” After a big laugh, the singer-actress continued, “And if God gave me a second choice, I would say I would have a home for everybody in the world to go home to. In my life, we did have a lot. Mama and daddy worked their butts off, but we always had a home. We always had three meals; never went hungry. Mama wasn’t that good of a cook, but we never went hungry.

“The organization that I really feel strongly about, they’re right here in Nashville and they’re called Safe Haven Family Shelter. And the reason I like them so much,” she said, is because it’s “the only housing program of its kind in Middle Tennessee that keeps the whole family together that is experiencing homelessness. Because no one should have to face that hardship alone, especially it’s not a family with children. It’s easy sometimes to look at a big problem like homelessness and feel overwhelmed. It is very overwhelming. What do you do? Get ’em a tiny house? You get ’em a tent? What do you do? You put ’em with Safe Haven, because Safe Haven shows us that change happens family by family, one safe night and one new beginning at a time, and that’s the kind of change that lasts.”

Riffing on the theme of the event, McEntire said, “I have been so very blessed to know and work with some of the most powerful and some of the strongest women in the history of this business — some of them acquaintances and some really close friends. I’m talking about women who broke down doors, lifted each other up and paved the way for all of us in this room to do what we love to do so much. And I wouldn’t be standing here today without the strong, fearless trailblazers who came before me. I hope that I’ve passed along some of what those women taught me. And I’m so proud to see this next generation of women who are shaping the industry and this world for better every single day.”

These presenters and honorees came to know each other through vastly different circumstances. For McEntire and Scott, Reba first met Hillary when her mother, Nashville native Linda Davis, would bring her by the house as a toddler. With Crow and Morris, the first meeting happened when Maren put “My Church” on streaming services as a then-indie artist and had her lifetime hero, Crow, get her number and leave an unsolicited message on her voicemail about how much she loved the song she’d just heard.

Said Crow, “I love Maren so much, and yes, I did — I called somebody that knew how to get her phone number so I could call her and just say, ‘I don’t know you at all, but I already love you.’” It wasn’t just paying her own success forward but acknowledging legitimate inspiration coming up from the next generation. “As a songwriter,” Crow said, “no matter how long you’ve been doing it, from time to time you meet people that make you wanna be better and make you wanna keep writing songs that resonate with people, because they’re having the same experience that you’re having. And Maren has always done that from the very beginning for me. I hear her music and I don’t just hear her music; I feel her in her music and it makes me want to go into my little safe space and write songs that I know could mean something to somebody else.”

Morris, in her introduction, said that Crow “has supported the Natural Resources Defense Council for over a decade. She’s tirelessly championed their work confronting the climate crisis, protecting public health and safeguarding nature. She’s always used her platform to make a difference.”

Talking about her work supporting environmental awareness, Crow acknowledged that this has made her a pariah, or a laughingstock, among some of the voices on the right. Which is a byproduct she is willing to live with, and, in a way, even benefit from.

“About 20 years ago,” Crow explained, “there was a movie that came out, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ and it was produced by Laurie David, which showed us the science to what was going to be coming… What I did was what I always did, which is exactly what my mom always did: If you see something that you feel like you can help, then you show up to the committee meeting or you go down to the church or you take a casserole. For me, I went on tour with Laurie, and we talked about climate change at universities. She talked about what they could do, and I, of course, played songs… and there were some skits, some comedy. that went with it. Part of the comedy was like, ‘okay, h’Here’s what you guys can do. You can go to your cafeteria and you can take the grease and you can put it in your gas tanks,’ or ‘You can get on a lifecycle and you can run the electricity in your study hall.’ And then I had this other brilliant idea, which I thought was kind of hilarious: ‘Let’s save trees and only use one square of toilet tissue — unless it’s a big job, and you can use two.’ Well, I think it might’ve been two days or even one day after going to Capitol Hill, and meeting all of these senators who were pooh-poohing the science, that Fox TV ran a whole thing that absolutely crucified me, made me look ridiculous, disqualified me. They said I was trying to legislate toilet paper.

“Here is the moral to the story,” Crow added. “That thing still gets talked about has been the gift that has kept on giving, because it still gives me every opportunity to talk about what’s happening right now.”

As passionate as all the speakers were about their causes, there was no speech more riveting than the one given by Guyton, who hardly ignored the perpetual elephant in the room — that the prejudice she has faced is not just because she is a woman. A decade after she began to become well-known in Nashville and country circles, she is still the foremost woman of color in country.

As Breland, who faces many of the same issues as a Black man, said in his introduction: “Mickey has broken barriers that, if we’re being entirely honest, should have never been there in the first place. But because they were, she knocked them down with grace, grit and power. She’s made space for artists like me and so many others to stand a little taller, to sing a little louder, and to know that we belong.” And, he added, “It’s not just your resilience and your defiance and your bravery, but it’s also your softness and your compassion that makes you such a dynamic and powerful individual.”

During her speech, Guyton asked every Black woman in the audience to stand, and made a point of including the luncheon’s servers in that. “This honor is not just for me,” she said. “It is for every Black woman who wakes up each day and chooses strength over resilience and silence, purpose over fear, community over competition. It is for our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, for those who came before us and for those still to come. Black women are the blueprint. We are visionaries., the culture shapers, the barrier breakers. We are not just resilient, we are radiant. Despite the weight of generational burdens and systemic challenges, we continue to rise, lead, nurture and transform.

“But empowerment is more than a word. It is an act,” she said, segueing into her charity of choice. “And the Loveland Foundation embodies every meaning of the phrase.” She invited to the stage the foundation’s CEO, Sharlene Kemler, who was able to provide necessary stats, like the fact that Loveland has provided 210,000 hours of therapy sessions to more than 25,000 recipients.

“I have been in this town for 10-plus years,” Guyton said, “and the injustices that I have seen… I have told some of my friends that are white women., the way that the state of this country music industry is, you are experiencing on a small scale of what it feels like to be discriminated against. Let that sink in. It is unacceptable and we deserve so, so much more. You deserve so, so much more. … So let us continue to truly empower one another by lifting as we climb. Let us be unafraid to take up space to speak our truth, to walk boldly in our magic and to fight against, not fight for, the systems that oppress us.

“I’m so honored to be here among so many extraordinary women and individuals supporting women creators.” She said the city “continues to be built on artistry. So as someone who’s dedicated their career to connecting artists, fans and communities, I can say with absolute certainty, there’s really nowhere quite like Nashville. Even if we need a little work,” she added, qualifying herself, “it’s a great city.”

This first-ever Power of Women: Nashville was a sister event to the awards that have been given out by Variety semiannually in Los Angeles and New York since 2009. Previous recipients at those events on the coasts have included the wide-ranging likes of Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton, Shonda Rhimes, Carol Burnett, Christiane Amanpour, Zoe Saldaña, Helen Mirren, Ava DuVernay, Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, Anitta, Brie Larson and Miley Cyrus, among many others.

One wrinkle that had never been part of the events in L.A. or NYC felt like a must-do here: having a house band. A group of top Nashville players was set up on either side of the stage, put together by Go West Creative Group’s entertainment producer, Jeremy Vaughn, and led by music director Tyler Cain. The group of crack musicians, which included several players who have recorded with our toured with the four star honorees, also backed up two singers who took turns in the spotlight at the event.

Meghan Linsey serenaded the crowd with a medley of songs by the four star honorees, from McEntire’s “Fancy” to Guyton’s “Better Than You Left Me,” before doing her own new single, “Humble Again.” The ballad movingly alludes to the ups and downs of Linsey’s own career in Nashville, which included a top 10 hit as a member of Steel Magnolia, followed by a stint as a contestant on “The Voice”… and some times she wondered who her real friends were as she faced career challenges.

Many in the crowd were moved. “It’s hard to eat with a lump in your throat,” said writer-director Callie Khouri, who was among those watching in the audience, touched by Linsey’s candor.

On a lighter note, the house band also provided backing on a party song, as Dasha came out to sing a cover of Gretchen Wilson’s “Here for the Party” that she premiered at Stagecoach last weekend. Dasha has put out a studio version of the song exclusively for Amazon Music, which is set to announce a special initiative with the rising singer in the coming days.

Also on the dais was Alexandra Dean, a filmmaker who has directed a documentary about the Judds that Lifetime is premiering over Mother’s Day weekend. Ashley Judd had been scheduled to attend and talk about the new doc, but because she was ill, Dean stepped in to discuss a film that fit in with the day’s recurring mental health theme.

The director promised her Judds movie will not whitewash or sentimentalize Naomi Judd, but it will celebrate her. “Naomi, for all her flaws, was a real fighter,” she noed, saying the late star accomplished what she did when she “came out of a background of abuse and deprivation and desperation, and when you think about that, you think, who should not be inspired by that?.. I think Wynonna and Ashley would tell you they didn’t get what they needed for much of their life… but Naomi did what she could, and what she could actually was very extraordinary.

“The Judds family, we do not love ’em for their perfection,” Dean added. “We love ’em because they survive. They know how to survive with grace. And that’s a form of power.”

The program was hosted by Melissa Joan Hart, who told the crowd she had been a Nashville resident for five years. “This city has welcomed me and my family with open arms, lots of biscuits and hot chicken. So I consider myself a little bit Yankee and a little bit y’all.”

Attendees at the Hyatt Grand event included artists such as Amanda Shires, Brittbey Spencer, Lola Kirke, Lauren Alaina, Amy Grant, Cam, Grace Bowers, Sara Evans and Jessie James Decker. Actors represented included Patricia Heaton, Chrissy Metz, Rex Linn and Laura Prepon. Songwriters in the crowd included Natalie Hemby, Jessi Alexander and Ink.

Impact list honorees or other VIPs on hand included Sarah Trahern, Cris Lacy, Taylor Lindsey, Leslie Fram, Tracy Gershon, Ali Harnell, Anna Weisband, Ebie McFarland, Jessi Vaughn Stevenson, Sally Williams, Stephanie Hudacek, Stacy Blythe, JoJamie Hahr, Julie Boos, Jackie Augustus, Tiffany Dunn, Rakiyah Marshall, Jackie Teague, Deana Ivey, Emily Fletcher Wright, Beverly Keel, Holly G., Lisa Chader, Georgia Juvelis, Heather Vassar, Ania Hammar, Brittany Schaffer, Bryan Moore, Jason Owen, Mindy Barry, Jake Basden and many more.

In introducing the program, Variety executive music editor Jem Aswad made a point of noting that the next time there is a Power of Women: Nashville, we should expect to see different honorees across the board. “One thing we want to emphasize is that Power of Women is not a competition, where we decide one person is No. 1 and another’s No. 4 or No. 23. Instead, we’re saying these are some of the most important creatives and executives in Nashville. We hope to have a completely different list next time we’re here, because heaven knows there’s certainly no shortage of women in Nashville deserving of these honors.”

Click here for content from Variety‘s Power of Women: Nashville special issue, including our four cover stories:

How Kelsea Ballerini Turned Heartbreak Into Country Hits, and the Romance That Inspired Her Introspective New Music

Mickey Guyton on Bucking the Odds in Country: ‘Black Women Inspire Me — They’re Not Being Silent’

Sheryl Crow on Settling Down but Still Fighting the Power in Nashville: ‘I Call My Representatives Every Single Morning’

Reba McEntire on ‘Happy’s Place,’ ‘The Voice’ and Her Superstar Singing Career: ‘I Thank God for the Fans’

Variety’s 2025 Nashville Power of Women Impact Report Spotlights Music City Muscle

Variety’s Power of Women Nashville Honors Five Top Songwriters

Jessi Alexander on Her Climb in Nashville From Fledgling Artist to Blockbuster Country Songwriter: ‘I Love the Thrill of the Chase’

Women of the Grand Ole Opry: Four Execs Who Keep the 100-Year-Old Nashville Institution in Tune