Brothers Osborne could earn their third Vocal Duo of the Year Award this year, while Maddie & Tae who are heading up the country charts with their song, “Friends Don’t,” could earn their first at this year’s CMA Awards.

Maddie & Tae didn’t expect a nod since they’d just released their new song on a new record label (Mercury Nashville) and were putting the finishing touches on a new album.

“Being nominated this year, one-we did not, we never expected it, obviously, but we didn’t really expect it this year, because we just put the first single out and everything is slowly rolling out,” said the duo’s Maddie Marlow. “Having that nomination was like, oh wow, our peers do still feel like we’re doing something special and do still believe in us and that was a really nice spirit-lifter where we were like, ‘Oh my gosh. We are doing something right and we’re making music that people are enjoying,’ and that was just a huge, huge compliment. And we’re nominated with some of favorite people in the industry, so super fun.”

After winning their first CMA Award in 2016, TJ and John Osborne were definitely feeling the love from their peers and folks in the industry. ““We definitely can feel the love and I feel like we’re trying to reciprocate that as much as we can because we are incredibly thankful,” said TJ. “I mean, it’s amazing. We came to this town so many years ago. We look like an overnight success, but we came here just some poor blue-collar kids from Maryland, and here we are winning a CMA [Award].” The brothers are also up for Musical Event of the Year with Dierks Bentley for the Arizona native’s latest hit, “Burning Man.”

The 52nd Annual CMA Awards will broadcast live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena November 14th at 8pm ET/PT on ABC.

VOCAL DUO OF THE YEAR
Brothers Osborne
Dan + Shay
Florida Georgia Line
Maddie & Tae
Sugarland