ACM Awards: Chris Stapleton Delivers Fiery Tribute To Victims Of Route 91 Shooting

ACM/Amazon

Chris Stapleton brought the house down during Monday night’s ACM Awards with a performance of “Watch You Burn,” a tribute to the late victims of the shooting that took place at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.

The chilling track was made even more so by the fact that this year’s ACM Awards show took place in Las Vegas, just blocks from where gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire from his window at the Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 58 and wounding hundreds more before taking his own life. The scathing lyrics of “Watch You Burn” offer a word of caution to the man who opened fire on innocent civilians and anyone who seeks to cause harm.

Only a coward would pick up a gun
And shoot up a crowd trying to have fun
Now the Vegas lights, they won’t lose their glow
And the band will play and go on with the showThe chorus vows that the guilty party will get their turn with lyrics that read, “Son, you’re gonna get your turn. Devil gonna watch you burn.”

Jason Alden, who was performing when gunfire erupted at the festival, introduced Chris Stapleton who was joined on stage by a 16-person choir for the “Watch You Burn” television debut.

“Watch You Burn” was written by Stapleton and Mike Campbell, and was a “therapeutic” session for the singer who told the Tennessean that it was written while he was working through his feelings about the mass shooting, the deadliest on record in the United States.

“It’s a self-therapy session sometimes. Sometimes that’s all [a song is] for,” Stapleton said. “Mike listened and…really got it to a place where he made me feel like it was not a song that was meant to be in my pocket.”

Watch a clip of Chris Stapleton performing “Watch You Burn” live at the ACM Awards in the video below.