Riley Green and Ella Langley Lead Country Music With Seven ACM Nominations
Country music gets a fresh scoreboard on May 17, and Ella Langley is at the top of it with seven ACM Awards nominations. Riley Green is right behind her with four, and the two could leave the show sharing the Music Event of the Year trophy for “Don’t Mind If I Do.”
May 17 on Prime Video
The ACM Awards air on Prime Video, putting both artists in the same broadcast and the same awards race. Langley and Green are also up in the Artist-Songwriter of the Year category, which gives each of them multiple ways to walk out with hardware, not just the shared-collaboration prize.
“Don’t Mind If I Do” follows “You Look Like You Love Me,” the earlier collaboration that helped build this pairing into a repeat ACM presence. That matters for the awards math: one song can produce one trophy, but two linked releases have turned these Alabama artists into a two-name proposition across the ballot.
Alabama roots, same ballot
Green said, “Me and Ella have had a lot of success together over the last couple of years. I’m so happy to see how she’s doing in country music—it’s so tough for a new artist to break through, especially a female artist.” He also said, “To see another artist from Alabama win like that, we’ve got a lot of pride in where we’re from, so I’m really happy for her.”
Langley framed the collaboration as a creative fit, saying, “I’ve done a few duets at this point and some feature stuff, and really, for me, it’s the relationship, the connection. It’s somebody I want to create with, you know? It’s fun. That’s the whole joy of living where we live, and getting to do what we get to do, we are surrounded by people who love to do the same thing.” She added, “Riley being from Alabama, we grew up with a lot of the same musical influences.”
The pair’s overlap reaches beyond the trophy count. Langley said, “Our hometowns are two hours apart from each other,” and described how “Don’t Mind If I Do” started when Green “wrote that one by himself” and asked her “to come in the green room and see how a female sounded on it, just for fun.”
Green Room Collaboration
That process helped keep the song on the project, and Langley said, “Then I think they loved it the way we did it—so they kept it on there!” Green has also addressed the speculation around their relationship, saying, “I’m rumored to have dated a lot of people. I kind of understand that. People always long for that Tim and Faith, Johnny and June, George and Tammy thing,” and, “Me and Ella have two giant songs together, and I think fans want to believe that what you’re singing about is real.”
For ACM voters, the practical result is simple: Langley enters with seven nominations, Green with four, and both have a direct path to the same stage if “Don’t Mind If I Do” wins Music Event of the Year. If that happens, the collaboration that began in a green room becomes the clearest proof that this pairing is now part of country music’s awards machinery, not just its rumor mill.
