Garth Brooks held a virtual press conference on July 29 to announce that he is respectfully withdrawing his name from future nominations for the CMA Entertainer of the Year Award.

Garth won his record-setting seventh CMA Entertainer of the Year Award in 2019. He is asking the Country Music Association to recognize him as “CMA Entertainer of the Year Emeritus” in the future.

“It made winning CMA Entertainer of the Year not that much fun,” said Garth, referring to his 2019 win in which he received backlash for winning the award many fans thought Carrie Underwood deserved.

“I’m expecting to give a standing ovation to Carrie,” says Garth. “I mean, this is her night. And when they said my name, then I was like, ‘I’m lost here ’cause I don’t know what to say, so I’m just gonna recap the night of what I loved.’ I think that was a big jolt of [the backlash]. No matter what the start of it was, the result of the millions of tweets, it was one little tweet that caught my eye that made me go . . . ‘I need to fix that,’ so for eight months it has bothered me, but I gotta tell you, there is a freeing feeling about me right now when I walk out of this building that I’m going to really, really, really enjoy where we stand as a band and crew, because it’s not going to change anything in our perspective, but I really love the fact that someone else . . . is going to get to experience that Entertainer of the Year nod. That’s a wonderful thing. Carrie’s might just be a year later. It might be her year this year.”

Garth will still vie for CMA Awards in categories other than Entertainer of the Year.