The Brothers Osborne also took the stage to honor Urban, who recently completed the ACM trifecta of winning New Artist of the Year, Artist of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year
Three Keith Urban classics got a tribute twist at the 2025 ACM Awards in celebration of the country singer-guitarist receiving the ACM Triple Crown Award. The honor recognizes artists who have completed the award trifecta of New Artist of the Year, Artist of the Year, and Entertainer of the Year. The award was last presented in 2010 to Carrie Underwood.
To mark the occasion this year, Megan Moroney, Chris Stapleton, and Brothers Osborne covered — you guessed it — three Urban classics. Moroney took the stage first for a hushed acoustic performance of “Stupid Boy,” a single from Urban’s 2006 album Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing.
Then, Chris Stapleton interpreted the bluesy “Blue Ain’t Your Color” from Urban’s 2016 album Ripcord (the cameras even caught Urban singing along to the tune in the audience with wife Nicole Kidman). To close out the tribute, the Brothers Osborne cranked the volume for a rendition of “Where the Blacktop Ends” from Urban’s breakthrough 1999 self-titled album. And at this point, Urban couldn’t help but grab a guitar from under his chair and hop onstage to rip a solo.
Urban has scored 50 ACM Awards nominations in his career with 14 wins. The artists who led the tribute are building quite a legacy of their own at the awards show. Stapleton has scored 15 wins out of 35 nominations, while Brothers Osborne have won six of their seven nominations. As the youngest, rising star of the bunch, Moroney has scored nine nominations. Her first win came in 2024 for New Female Artist of the Year. She’s nominated this year for Female Artist of the Year and Album of the Year for Am I Okay? (I’ll Be Fine).
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“I’ve just now been able to express more broadly what I felt inside,” Urban told Rolling Stone in 2021 about expanding beyond the label of country. “Even my ability to express myself was a bit limited for a lot of years, just for… all manner of reasons really.”
At the time, John Mayer praised Urban, saying: “It’s hard to make people who don’t play guitar care about guitar solos, but Keith is one of those rare few who knows how to make the guitar speak inside of their songs. His phrasing is really special. Part of appearing effortless is that people don’t notice the effort, but he’s doing some really beautiful and fluid stuff that’s way harder to pull off than you might think.”