Lainey Wilson, Reba McEntire & Miranda Lambert Debut Emotional ‘Trailblazer’ at 2025 ACM Awards
Written by djfrosty on May 8, 2025
Talk about the trailblazers! Country icon Reba McEntire joined Lainey Wilson and Miranda Lambert to debut the trio’s emotional new collaboration “Trailblazer” toward the end of the 2025 ACM Awards Thursday (May 8) at The Star in Frisco, Texas. The song had dropped on streaming services just hours earlier, at 8 p.m. ET.
The celebrated country artists took to a stage that was dressed to appear like a barren desert, the skies behind them a warm orange as the silhouettes of birds fluttered through the the scene. Dressed in matching brown suede outfits accented with turquoise, the three women traded lyrics before harmonizing on the chorus, singing, “Talk about a trailblazer, cuttin’ one half at a time/ Running like a dream chaser, living on a prayer and a rhyme/ Put a flag in the ground to the country sound, to the rhythm of your own highway/ Talk about a trailblazer, I’m rolling down the road you paved.”
At the end of the song, McEntire, who was also hosting the show for the 18th time, took the hands of her collaborators, and together, the three women walked to the front of the stage and took a bow together.
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The day before the ACM Awards, the trio spoke to Billboard‘s Melinda Newman about their new ballad, which pays tribute to those who influenced them and paved the way. “We wanted to lean in pretty hard to paying tribute to each person,” shared Lambert, who was the focus of Billboard‘s inaugural Power Pets feature alongside her dog Bellamy. “We had to do it strategically, though, because we didn’t want it to be so blatant — but more like a secret thing that you would have to listen to it twice.”
“We were just having a conversation about how [Lambert and McEntire] have influenced me and [about] passing the torch and blazing trails for each other,” Wilson also noted. “Generation after generation, it’s going to continue, but we got to keep blazing those trails for the next one.”
The ACM Awards are produced by Dick Clark Productions, which is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a joint venture between Eldridge Industries and Billboard parent company Penske Media.