Honoree: Orville Peck (2026)

But Orville Peck, of course, has become quite the important voice for the LGBTQ representation in country music.

Now, country music, formatically, has been known for a thousand years as being a very non-inclusive format, right? Has it been a struggle at all for you to make your name in country music? No.

I mean, you know, it's funny, like, at first, I would say no, only because I was under the naive impression that it didn't matter.

Like, no one ever told me that it wasn't inclusive.

And so I just, like, loved it from when I was a little kid.

And I was under the assumption that there was no reason why that should stop me from making it.

You know, I think I've always approached everything with this sort of...

I guess like blind kind of, I belong everywhere at any table.

Which has been like, you know, I think in a funny way, a lot of my success at these things where I haven't limited myself before entering the room.

But then I think as I kind of grew and started working way more in Nashville and in country music, I started to realize like, oh, this is a problem for people.

Also, another trait of mine is like, I am nothing if not the world's most petty person.

And so if anybody tells me I can't do something or I shouldn't be doing something, it's always been, unfortunately, the fuel for what makes me want to do it more and better than everyone and harder than everyone.

So it's been difficult at times for sure.

I've definitely been... caught off guard in moments where I've realized that you know me being gay has is suddenly like this sort of elephant in the room for people that it's a problem for some kind of next level of something in country music but like I said I have always just been like fiercely and I guess fearlessly determined that anyone can be a part of anything that they choose and I definitely haven't let it stop me.

You obviously were seduced by country music at a very early age.

What was it about country music that sucked you in like that versus any other genre of music?

Yeah, I think, you know, for me, like I said, anything that was a world that I could escape into that like I could really sort of devour in terms of imagination was always attractive to me.

And so I remember discovering Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton around the same time.

And that era of country, especially, and, you know, those two figures of country, they they seemed like characters to me.

I thought Dolly Parton was like Elvira.

I thought she was a character on Sesame Street or something.

I didn't know that she was just a real person.

And so that sort of charm of the fantasy around these personas really drew me in and I thought it was just so romantic and so cool.

And then as I got older, especially seeing that that was intersected, like I said, with this incredible vulnerability or sincerity, you know, like Dolly Parton's the perfect example.

And, you know, it's like, she is this larger than life, almost drag queen, persona of what it is to be this kind of cheerful, small-town Tennessee girl.