Despite her and Cody Johnson’s duet “I’m Gonna Love You” earning the Best Country Song nomination, Carrie Underwood seemingly snubbed the 2025 MTV VMAs.
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Not only did the American Idol judge not grace the event’s red carpet, but she also didn’t publicly acknowledge the nomination.
Along with this year’s nod, Carrie Underwood has only received one other nomination from the MTV VMAs. She previously earned a nomination for Best New Artist for the 2007 awards.
Although she didn’t acknowledge the nomination nor attend this weekend’s award show, Underwood had other things on her mind: the official kickoff of NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
This is the 13th season that the country star has opened Sunday Night Football. While recently speaking to The New York Times, Underwood revealed that she recorded 80 different variations of the Sunday Night Football theme. Each variation includes some lyric changes.
“It’s just all about flow and the rest of the sentence,” she explained. “You get in there and sometimes you’ll sing something and it sounded chunky and then somebody will be like, ‘Why don’t you switch the names or switch the order?'”
Carrie Underwood’s Duet Partner Cody Johnson Shares His Reaction to the 2025 MTV VMAs Nomination
Meanwhile, Johnson shared his thoughts about the surprise nomination, noting it was about time country music received attention from the VMAs.
“I think it speaks to the growth of country music as a genre, period,” he explained about the VMAs category. You know, like I know Shaboozey… So I’ll say this, like a lot of people can say, ‘Well, that’s not country.’ Well, look what he brought, you know what I’m saying?”
He then noted, “Post Malone is not really country… look what he brought to the table. ‘Well, Beyoncé is not really country.’ Well, I may agree or disagree with any of these statements, but look what it brought to the genre.”
Johnson further praised MTV for including country music in the VMAs. “Look at the eyes that are on the genre, and music as a whole has to recognize that. And I think that the MTV Awards were very smart for doing that because they’re going, ‘Hey, man, country music’s growing out the seams, maybe we should include these country bumpkins.’”