Cody Johnson caught up with Billboard's Lyndsey Havens & Tetris Kelly at the ACM Awards 2025.
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00:00What's up, brother?
00:02Oh, we're good.
00:02You know what's so funny?
00:03I'm liking the little bling right here.
00:04Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:05We were just talking to Jelly.
00:06He voted for you.
00:07He shouldn't be telling people that.
00:09He's not telling everybody.
00:10Oh, here he is.
00:13You can't tell everybody you voted for me.
00:14Who do you want?
00:15We all know.
00:16I told everybody.
00:17I know.
00:18Every interview.
00:19They're like, Jelly Roll said he voted for you.
00:20I'm like, I know.
00:21He told me on my bus.
00:22I should have came after you.
00:24But I had to come tell you that I voted for you again.
00:26I appreciate it, dog.
00:27Well, now that he's standing in front of you, man,
00:29what makes this guy so great?
00:30What makes him the entertainer of the year?
00:31Well, I've told this story a bunch, but one, we'll get there first.
00:33But I want to say this.
00:35One of the most important moments of my career,
00:37I won my first award at the CMTs,
00:39and the first person I've seen in that moment of my life was this cowboy.
00:43And he hugged me like we grew up together.
00:46I get emotional thinking about it.
00:48I mean, literally, I never felt more accepted.
00:52And I was such a fan anyways.
00:53And I have a lot of acquaintances in this room,
00:55but I don't have any fucking friends.
00:56That's my brother.
00:58Appreciate it.
00:58He's the entertainer of the year because he preaches the gospel.
01:01He works harder than everybody.
01:02He tours the entire world.
01:04He does it unapologetically.
01:05He doesn't ask any help from anybody for anything.
01:08He does it his way and his way only.
01:10He makes no compromises, takes no bullshit.
01:12And then he goes straight home,
01:14and he's a husband, a father, and a fucking farmer.
01:16That's why he deserves to be the entertainer.
01:18Hell, yes.
01:19I love you, baby.
01:20Wow.
01:21Let me get out of here.
01:22I'm going to get emotional.
01:23He just wrote your acceptance speech.
01:26Like, if you don't go to the church of Jelly Roll, have you been to church?
01:30It's like, my goodness, man.
01:31That's a preacher.
01:32That makes me want to cry.
01:34That was probably one of the nicest things anybody's ever said about me.
01:37Well, I'm going to flip the script a little bit, if you don't mind.
01:39You know, what makes him just as worthy of entertainer of the year in your eyes?
01:43Because he's unapologetically himself.
01:45You just saw it.
01:46Yeah.
01:46He's not going to – you can judge him all you want to.
01:48You can judge his past.
01:49You can look at his face tattoos and say, I know what he is.
01:52You don't know what Jelly Roll is.
01:53And he's so normal.
01:54He's such a normal person that we've talked a lot about struggling with, you know,
01:58anxiety or pressure and things like that.
02:00And he's not coming into country music saying, I'm going to chase this because it's going to make me rich and famous.
02:06No.
02:07He said, I'm Jelly Roll.
02:08This is the way I look.
02:10This is the way I sound.
02:11This is the way I'm going to act.
02:12This is the way I'm going to be.
02:13And, man, that's how legends like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson are made.
02:17Oh, dude, love that, man.
02:19What would a win – we all know who's voted for you now.
02:23What would a win for Entertainer of the Year mean to you, though?
02:26Oh, man, I don't know.
02:28It would be the culmination of the last 20 years of my life.
02:31I remember being on tour in a van with 12 guys and not having enough money to buy a McDonald's.
02:37Oh, my God.
02:38And I had $100, but I put it into the gas tank to go to the next show to, you know, make the next $100.
02:44And having a wife at home that missed me and was pregnant and couldn't pay my bills.
02:49She was working two jobs.
02:51And so you take that to seven nominations, and I think it would – I'm a cowboy.
02:55I chase gold buckles.
02:56That would be the country music gold buckle.
02:57And, I mean, you're just talking about being in bands, dude.
03:00Stadiums.
03:01That's crazy that you're about to play stadiums, man.
03:03Like, how do you prepare something that large and to be in front of that many people at once?
03:07I've been preparing my whole life.
03:08Every bar I ever played, every honky-tonk I ever played, every theater, I always said,
03:12there's a stadium somewhere near here.
03:14And we would play amphitheaters where you could see the stadium off in the distance.
03:18And I would tell my guys, have fun tonight.
03:21But that's where we're going.
03:22That's where we're going.
03:23And I think that drive and determination, I don't care if it takes 40 years.
03:27I'm still hooked.
03:28Yep.
03:29And it goes.
03:30Guys, we just went to the Church of Jelly Roll, now the Church of Cody Johnson, man.
03:33Thanks for all the preaching.
03:35Good luck tonight, man.
03:36Thank you very, very much.
03:38Thank you, of course.
03:39And my wife's pregnant with our little boy, so.
03:41What?
03:42What?
03:43Even more congratulations.
03:45Congratulations.
03:45That's awesome.