Avery Anna was in the middle of her performance at the Lone Star Smokeout festival in Arlington, Texas, when she was interrupted midshow by her friend and duet partner Sam Barber walking out on stage.
“I immediately was like, ‘What is happening,’” she said. “He doesn’t talk a lot, even during his performances so I knew that I had to have won something, because for him to get out there and say more than a couple words was really monumental for him. He was super nervous, but my family surprised me, so that was really cool. I was genuinely very shocked. I had no clue.”
What she’d won was the 2026 New Female Artist of the Year award from the Academy of Country Music. The award was presented a couple of weeks prior to the show, which was broadcast live from Las Vegas on Sunday. As the winner, the first-time nominee joined an esteemed group of past winners including Ella Langley, Megan Moroney and Lainey Wilson.
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Anna attended the show and performed, another first for the 22-year-old from Flagstaff, Ariz. “Last year, I had to fly back to Nashville because I had other shows and press that I had to do that week. So I was never able to experience the ACMs to its fullest,” she told WWD in advance of the show. “I haven’t really processed the fact that I’m going to be performing for all of my favorite artists, so I’m gonna have to keep my cool and try and show them what I’ve got.”
What she’s got, in addition to that shiny trophy, is a career on the upswing. Anna, who was born Avery Anna Rhoton, started singing in church as a child and wrote her first song in the fifth grade. During the pandemic, she posted a cover version of herself on TikTok singing Christina Aguilera’s “Say Something” from her bathtub. The success led to a song production deal and when she graduated from high school, she moved to Nashville where she signed a recording deal with Warner Music in 2022.
She’s since released two full-length albums and two EPs featuring collaborations with Parmalee, Dylan Marlowe, Hillary Lindsey and others. Her duet with Barber on “Indigo” reached number eight on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and she’s currently on the road headlining her “Girl of Constant Sorrow” tour that will include stops around the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Her most-recent album “let go letters,” was named one of Billboard’s 50 top albums of 2025 and has garnered over 1.7 billion global streams to date.
Anna’s style is not traditionally country. Rather, it’s “real, raw,” she said. “It’s heavily country, rock, pop, folk — whatever is most real and honest in my life at the time.”
She continued: “It means a lot to me that I am kind of an outside-of-the-box artist that doesn’t have a specific genre, that leans a little both ways, and the country music industry has welcomed that and embraced my voice and my brand and my artistry. That genuinely means the world to me because I have so much love and respect for the country music industry and community, and I’m just very grateful to be a part of it and to be welcomed with such loving arms.”
While her music may be eclectic, her style is a little easier to define.
“I’m a pretty indecisive person when it comes to outfits,” she admits. “I’ve been styling myself this whole time, but I’m working with a stylist now, and we really wanted to pay respects to growing up in Arizona and Flagstaff and show that ‘Western desert’ style. I just want to feel pretty and confident and be recognizable for my grandma and the other people who have been listening to my music since I started, as well as to the people that are being introduced to me for the first time at the show. I want to show them my roots, so there’s a lot of those Western influences and colors.”
Her stylist, Raina Gir, helped her select her custom-made performance outfit as well as her red carpet look, both of which she accessorized with turquoise jewelry as a nod to those roots. “It’s such a big part of who I am and what I believe in,” she said.
She described the red carpet look as “very feminine Arizona,” and her performance look as “desert grunge. It’s pretty rockin’. I’ll be capable of rocking out for a good four minutes.”
When on stage, Anna opts for clothes that are “modest, but ones I can move around in. I like my clothes to have a little bit of movement as well, just to add to the dramatics of it all.” But when she’s not in the spotlight, it’s a different story. “I just look like every other girl that you would see at Target,” she said.
Here’s an inside peek at Anna’s preparations for the big night.
