Parker McCollum turned the 2026 ACM Awards into a full-circle moment on Sunday night, sharing the stage with Lee Ann Womack for a performance of “Killin’ Me” that quickly became one of the evening’s most memorable highlights. The song appears on McCollum’s self-titled fifth studio album, which arrived in June 2025.
The collaboration carried extra meaning for McCollum because it followed a weekend of rehearsals and a red-carpet stop with his wife, Hallie Ray. Before the performance aired, he teased that fans would have to wait and see what the stage moment would look like, and the result ended up exceeding the buildup.
McCollum began the song alone, dressed in his familiar country look of starched jeans, boots, a blazer, and his cowboy hat, while a band backed him onstage. One of the musicians helping anchor the performance was Aubrie Sellers, Womack’s daughter, who sings background vocals on McCollum’s 2026 tour. The stripped-down setup kept the focus on the song before Womack made her entrance and lifted the performance even further.
When Womack joined him, she wore a plum dress with gold floral details and fringe, and the two blended their voices in a performance that felt warm, polished, and personal. McCollum finished the closing lines, bringing the collaboration to an emotional end that reflected the respect he has long had for Womack. He called her “one of the greatest to ever do it in the history of country music,” and said hearing her songs in the back seat of his mother’s car as a kid made the moment especially meaningful.
That connection went beyond admiration. McCollum said he has gotten to know Womack and her family over time, noting that Aubrie Sellers has worked with him, while Womack’s other daughter, Anna, served as an assistant engineer on his album and her husband, Frank Liddell, produced the project. McCollum’s latest self-titled album is also nominated for ACM Album of the Year, making the performance part of a much bigger career week for him.
After the performance, McCollum also added some of the night’s most heartfelt comments while accepting his ACM win for Album of the Year. He joked, “Starting to think y’all weren’t going to let me up here,” before thanking Frank Liddell and Eric Massey for helping shape the record in New York. He said the album was made over seven days and credited them with changing his life by pushing him when he was doubting himself.
McCollum then turned his attention to his wife, Hallie Ray Light, praising her support and joking that she should receive an award of her own for what she has done for his life. He also thanked his label team and gave shout-outs to fellow Texas and Red Dirt artists including Koe Wetzel, Randy Rogers, Wade Bowen, Pat Green, Miranda Lambert, and Cody Johnson, closing his speech by thanking everyone who had helped him through a difficult stretch nearly a year and a half earlier.
For Sellers, the night clearly meant a lot too. After McCollum’s win, she posted that she had never been more excited and said Parker and his team “DESERVED THIS,” adding that she was honored to be even a small part of the record and the night.
The ACM Awards were hosted by Shania Twain at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and streamed live on Prime Video. The show featured a wide slate of performances from artists including Blake Shelton, Lainey Wilson, Miranda Lambert, Jordan Davis, Thomas Rhett, and others, with Shelton also closing the ceremony with “The Gambler” in tribute to Don Schlitz.
McCollum’s duet with Womack stood out because it felt less like a routine awards-show feature and more like a genuine artist-to-artist salute. It was a polished performance, but also a deeply personal one, built on mutual respect, family ties, and the kind of career moment that makes an already big night feel bigger.
