At the 2023 CMT Music Awards, Wynonna Judd will talk about her late mother, Naomi Judd. Wynonna talked about Naomi while singing “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner with Ashley McBryde at an awards show in Austin, Texas, on Sunday. Naomi k!lled herself at age 76 in May 2022.
The 58-year-old country star pointed up and said, “Mama, you need to be here,” in the middle of a song. Wynonna added –
“I miss you, and I love you, and I don’t understand.”
Naomi’s last public performance was at last year’s CMT Music Awards, so the performance was especially touching. The Judds sang “Love Can Build a Bridge” at the 2022 event.
Do you know what was Naomi Judd’s net worth before her de@th? How Much Did She Make Until She Was 76:
Wynonna talked to Entertainment Tonight about her performance with McBryde at the 2023 ceremony. She said –
“I’m going to use my time to talk to anyone out there who is struggling.”
“It’s an opportunity to help somebody.”
“It’s a bittersweet time,” the musician said next, adding that her granddaughter’s first birthday is coming up in April.
“I’ve got both agony and ecstasy happening.”
Wynonna said in January that she wrote a new song after Naomi died while she was getting ready for the second leg of The Judds: The Final Tour, which ended in February. She told Entertainment Tonight at the time –
“I just wrote a song called ‘Broken and Blessed,’ and that’s how I feel on this tour.”
“‘I’m somewhere between hell and hallelujah’ is one of the lines in it.”
After singing some of the lyrics by herself, she continued –
“I struggle, and I think when I struggle, I say it onstage.”
She didn’t say when the song would be out, but she did say that her sister Ashley Judd is also a comfort to her. Wynonna said –
“I’m an orphan now, and I know that I also have a sister I’m getting close to more so than ever. That’s a remarkable thing to have someone in your life that you’re so different from, but that you can meet somewhere in the middle, and it works.”
Before The Judds: The Final Tour started in October, she talked to PEOPLE about going on tour after Naomi’s de@th. She said –
“Am I going to go home and just get depressed and down, and stay stuck in that? I signed on for this tour because it’s like, ‘I gotta do something.'”
Even though her mother had died, Judd said she was ready to take a leap of faith and go on stage. “I’m looking forward to showing up and walking out onstage,” she said, comparing her “terrifying jitters” to those people feel before walking down the wedding aisle.
She added –
“You’re terrified to say, ‘I do,’ in front of everybody, but you do, and you feel this, ‘Ahh,’ and you just feel the good stuff. I’m ready to feel the good stuff.”
“I’m going to walk out on that stage like I know what I’m doing. [The crowd is] going to buy it, or at least some of them will. I’m excited about that.”
The 2023 CMT Music Awards will be shown live on CBS and Paramount+ on Sunday, April 2, from the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.
