Brooks & Dunn are officially part of country music history. The duo, made up of Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn, won their 20th CMA Award, when they took home the trophy for Vocal Duo of the Year at the 2025 CMA Awards. Their latest trophy makes them the most-awarded artists in CMA Awards history. Brooks & Dunn first won in the category in 1992. They also won Vocal Duo of the Year at the 2024 CMA Awards.
“I’m a little emotional right now,” Dunn said when accepting the honor. “Every night at these sold-out shows, it’s surreal to us. People come up and Kix will go, ‘How many of you are first-time Brooks & Dunn fans at the show?’ and 80 percent of the audience are raising their hands. So, we’ll take this and try to make you proud.”
Backstage, the two reflected on their legacy, and their relevance in country music, even after all these years.
“We’re the luckiest people in the world to get to do what we dream of doing, and doing it this long,” Dunn says. “If it stopped yesterday, I’d be miserable.”
“This last couple of years, I think both of us felt, at the end of our tour, normally we’d be exhausted and couldn’t wait to just go fishing or get away, or do something like that,” adds Brooks. “I think we’re both feeling like we could do it, like ‘Can we get some more gigs?’ We were good for like another 20. Seriously.”
@everythingnash @Brooks & Dunn won their first CMA Award for Vocal Duo in 1992. #countrymusic #cma #cmaawards ♬ original sound – EverythingNash
Brooks & Dunn Reflect On Their Legacy
When Brooks & Dunn first formed a duo, they were both pursuing solo careers. They never imagined that, 34 years after their debut Brand New Man album was released in 1991, they would still be winning awards, and be relevant in country music.
“We had no clue,” Dunn says. “We put one foot in front of the other. We just don’t get that excited. I was looking for excuses not to come tonight.”
“We’re not great harmony singers,” continues Brooks. “It’s not really what we do or ever did, and we obviously didn’t know each other from Adam. And we wrote those songs the first week we met, which isn’t uncommon in songwriter terms in Nashville, Tennessee. But the thought that we’d be sitting here having this conversation since 1990, several semesters ago, is pretty amazing.”
Brooks & Dunn Speak Out Against AI
Brooks & Dunn also spoke out against AI, as a computer-generated artist recently had the No. 1 song in the country.
“There’s one thing that a machine can’t do,” Brooks says. “Even if you come up with some rhymes, people buy into it. A machine’s never gonna be able to get on stage and do the thing. I really feel like people that really buy into artists, and really create careers that last a long time, they really appreciate the fact that you wrote those songs. I know I do.”
Brooks & Dunn’s Plans for More Music
Brooks & Dunn released Reboot in 2019, a collection of their hits sung with other country music artists. They followed that with Reboot II in 2024, but hint that they are now working on brand-new material.
“We’ve got a label that we had a really great meeting with. They can’t make us make a record, but they would love to see us do it,” Brooks tells Billboard. “They don’t want to put out a record that’s not a great record.”