Kane Brown Transports Texas Crowd to Georgia With Soulful Ray Charles Cover at the 2024 ACM Awards

This year’s Academy of Country Music Awards took place in Frisco, TX, but for about three minutes, Kane Brown had the whole Ford Center at The Star audience transported to the Peach State with a performance of “Georgia On My Mind.”

Before taking the stage, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter was introduced by the War and Treaty’s Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, who pointed out Ray Charles’ role in popularizing the American Songbook classic, originally written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell. Prime Video cameras then panned to a dapper-looking Brown dressed in a black suit, whose silky voice melted into the microphone with support from a section of string instrumentalists.

“Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through,” he crooned. “Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.

Immediately afterwards, Brown — who released his cover of “Georgia On My Mind” on streaming services in April — stepped backstage for a one-on-one interview with Bobby Bones. “I was so scared,” he told the radio personality. “I was nervous, man. It’s a big song, but also, I’m used to running around. I didn’t have any moves, I just stood like this. I wish I had tequila before I went on.”

Brown is nominated for entertainer of the year at the 2024 awards, as are Luke Combs, Jelly Roll, Cody Johnson, Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen and Lainey Wilson. Hosted for the 17th time by Reba McEntire, the ACMs are produced by Dick Clark Productions.

DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldridge. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.