Parker McCollum brought a surprise guest to the 61st ACM Awards on Sunday night, teaming with Lee Ann Womack for a duet of his song “Killin’ Me.” Their performance added another standout moment to a show that leaned on star pairings and familiar voices, with Womack’s daughter, Aubrie Sellers, also appearing onstage.
For McCollum, the moment came after a busy stretch that has redefined his career. He released his fifth full-length project in June 2025, and the album was nominated this year for Album of the Year. That project was produced in part by Frank Liddell, and McCollum said the making of it was “the most focused [he’s] ever been,” while also pushing him to “get uncomfortable” and experiment more.
The duet carried extra weight because McCollum has spent the past year talking about growth and identity in country music. He has said he always wanted to be a country singer, but also admitted the latest project did not fit neatly into one box. “This doesn’t really sound like country music to me,” he said of the record, before adding that he no longer cares much about labels and wants to make whatever he sounds like.
That openness also helps explain why Womack’s appearance landed the way it did. McCollum has described Womack and Sellers as “unbelievably awesome people, first ballot hall of famers in the game of life,” and he joked that he should have been the background singer on their performance. Sellers has already sung background vocals for him on tour, which made her presence onstage feel less like a one-off and more like a natural extension of a working relationship.
The connection between the artists has been visible for months. In October 2024, Womack posted a Halloween video in which she dressed up as McCollum and joked that her husband and daughter were spending the holiday in the studio with @parkermccollum instead of with her. Sunday’s duet gave that joke a real-world payoff, turning an offhand social media moment into a live performance before a national audience.
The performance also fit the broader shape of the 61st ACM Awards, which used collaborations to give the night its biggest lift. For McCollum, the duet served as both a reward and a signal: his latest album has already been heard by the Academy, and now it has been tied to one of the marquee moments of the evening. Fans who missed it can rewatch the ACM performances on Amazon Prime Video, with the show available on demand starting Monday at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT.
What Sunday night made clear is that McCollum is no longer trying to sound like a safer version of himself. He is building around the kind of artists he has long admired, and the result is a career that looks less boxed in than before.
