Brothers Osborne Reveal Their Single Was Abruptly Pulled From Country Radio

ACM Awards / Twitter

At the 57th ACM Awards, held on Monday March 7, Brothers Osborne took home the Duo of the Year trophy, which was given to them by actors Guy Torrey and Tom Pelphrey.

Brothers Osborne have taken home this award in 2017, 2018, and have been nominated from 2019 – 2021. The award those years went to Dan + Shay. In 2022, Brothers Osborne took back the award thanks to the success of their album Skeletons and the singles it produced “All Night” and “I’m Not for Everyone.”

It also marks the first time an openly gay artist has won this award. Brothers Osborne member TJ Osborne came out as gay in February 2021.

After John thanked his wife, dog, family, friends, and more, TJ said, “About a week ago, they pulled our single from country radio, so I needed a little wind put in our sails.”

TJ was talking about their single “I’m Not For Everyone,” which was released on April 26, 2021. The official music video dropped that August and featured gay actor Leslie Jordan.

“I’m Not For Everyone” is about how every single person on this Earth is different. Speaking of the song in a press release, Brothers Osborne said, “That IS our mission statement, ’cause we ARE not for everyone. I think at some point, not only in your career, but your life as a human being, you can’t make everyone happy. We have spoken up so many times, and we have, I wouldn’t say we’ve paid much of a price, but we’ve pissed a lot of people off by being ourselves. We just have to accept that no matter we are not for everybody and you have to be okay with that. And this is the first song where I actually, I sing a verse on, which is perfect because this song in particular is the both of us saying we’re not everybody’s cup of tea and that’s okay.”

The single hit number 33 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart on March 5 after being  chart for 43 weeks, but is not on the chart dated March 12. It is unknown who TJ is referring to as “they,” but it could be their record label EMI Records Nashville.

Backstage with press, John said, “We kind of keep pushing and trying to persevere and what has kept us going for the past eight years are these [awards]. It has kept wind in our sails, not only what it does in terms of the fanbase and the notoriety, but what it does for us as people who keep fighting what we feel like is an uphill battle even when we do win.”

TJ added, “I mentioned this recently in an article, just with us feeling like we’re underdogs the whole time. And that’s part of it, is that we don’t get necessarily a lot of the love that some of the other artists do on radio and I’m not necessarily criticizing anyone specifically for that, but it’s just a fact, and to be there tonight, I guess some people were upset that I said that. Like, I said a true statement. I don’t know, our single literally got pulled last week and we just won an award. If you’re upset about that, maybe you’re part of the problem.”

See their acceptance speech below.