Morgan Wallen performs ’98 Braves’ at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards

Morgan Wallen paid tribute to the 1998 Atlanta Braves team during his performance at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards.

The 30-year-old country singer sang “98 Braves” from the team’s current stadium, Truist Park in Atlanta, during the awards ceremony on Sunday, November 19. Members of the 1998 team were in attendance for the performance, as the song is an ode to their record of winning 106 regular season games in 1998, despite not securing the World Series that year. The track was included on Wallen’s 2023 album, One thing at a timeand peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart earlier this year.

Wallen is nominated for 16 awards at the 2023 BBMAs, including Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top Country Artist, Top Country Male Artist, Top Country Album and Top Country Song. He is connected to SZA for the second most nods. Taylor Swift leads the pack with nominations in 20 categories.

Wallen’s performance from Truist Park is part of a new model for the BBMAs. Instead of a traditional network broadcast, this year’s awards ceremony will be digital and will feature performances and winner celebrations from around the world, such as during artists’ tour stops. Wallen is in the middle of it One night at a time tour, which runs until August 2024, and he had shows in Atlanta on Friday, November 10 and Saturday, November 11.

Wallen was notably banned from the 2021 BBBMAs after he used the N-word in a video that surfaced in February. However, he still won Top Country Male Artist, Top Country Artist and Top Country Album at the ceremony that year. He returned to the awards show in 2022, where he performed and received Top Country Male Artist.

Related: Morgan Wallen’s ups and downs throughout his career over the years

The bad boy of country music. Morgan Wallen has faced a series of controversies throughout his career. The “Whiskey Glasses” singer got his start on Season 6 of The Voice in 2014, where he was part of Adam Levine’s team but was eliminated during the playoffs. Two years after his appearance on the […]

More recently, Wallen had to cancel concerts for six weeks due to a voice injury. “I got bad news from [my] doctors,” he said in a May Instagram post. “After ten days of vocal rest, I played three shows in Florida last weekend and felt terrible during the third. So I went in and got checked out yesterday, and they told me that I had re-injured my vocal cords and that I had vocal fold trauma. Their advice is that I should take six weeks of voice rest, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

The following month, Wallen announced that he had been cleared to resume performing. “The doctor gave me permission to talk and sing,” he wrote via Instagram in June. “We back.”