Taylor Swift's 'got the magic', country stars say at CMA Awards red carpet

NASHVILLE – When you think Taylor Swift, I hope you think of me. Sixteen years after winning her first CMA Award, Swift's impact is still felt by country music artists who have watched her career and collaborated with her.

“Her as a human being is inspirational,” said country artist Mickey Guyton on the red carpet Wednesday in Nashville. “She just runs the world, and I’m OK with that. Can she just be president of our world? That’s what I really want.”

Guyton said she met Swift at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021 when Swift performed Carole King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

“I have a picture with her and Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban,” she said. “She was so sweet to my son and that really should be my Christmas card every year, but I just don’t want to flex on people like that.”

Chris Stapleton walked the red carpet with his wife, Morgane. He mentioned taking the family to the Eras Tour, which starts up again Thursday night 5,217 miles away in Argentina.

“I don’t think they realized and we didn’t realize either that she was going to say hi to us afterwards,” he said. “We got backstage and my kids are standing there, they just kind of froze. They didn’t know what to do. She was so kind and sweet to say hi to them.”

Stapleton is featured on Swift’s country track “I Bet You Think About Me”, the most recent CMA Awards nomination she received for Video of the Year.

“She texted me and said, ‘Hey, you want to do this thing?’ and I was like ‘OK sure,’” he recalled when Swift asked him to collaborate. “That was all during the pandemic. So it was all kind of remote in the ways that we did it.”

Hosts Luke Bryan and Peyton Manning debuted the show with a nod toward Swift's recent excursions with a certain NFL tight end.

“We’re back,” said Manning to a full crowd in Bridgestone Arena, “and you know what that means. Yep, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift weren’t available.”

Earlier on the red carpet, Bryan told me about the first time he ever saw Swift in October 2006.

“I had a brand-new single out and ‘Tim McGraw’ was doing really well,” he remembered, “and we were up in the Northwest doing well. And we were in this small little bar. She doesn’t even know I was in there. I was there with some radio people. And it was Halloween night and she came out dressed as a Halloween fairy and she signed everybody’s autograph. I watched her and thought, ‘That girl right there. She’s got the magic.’”

Swift has won 12 CMA Awards over her career. Her most recent win was Song of the Year in 2017 for “Better Man”. Her first accolade was in 2007, when she won the Horizon Award and iconically said, "This is definitely the highlight of my senior year.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: CMA 2023: Chris Stapleton talks Taylor Swift CMA 2023, Eras tour