Awards & Exits: Country Music Events of 2018

Country music has never been shy about celebrating (and immortalizing) its own. So many of the 2018 headlines focused on awards. But far too many concerned losses, the deaths of musical stalwarts who were crucial in defining and popularizing the genre. Then, late in the year, there was the mind-numbing massacre in the country bar in California while memories of the Las Vegas slaughter of 2017 were still fresh.