Fresh off winning the New Male Artist trophy at the Academy of Country Music Awards, Nate Smith teamed with Avril Lavigne to perform their new single, “Bulletproof,” on the show. The studio version of the song dropped early Thursday morning.
“Been taking these shots, shots, shots, 80, 90, everything they’ve got,” they sing together in the chorus, “But the whiskey don’t kill like it’s supposed to do/Baby, your memory must be bulletproof.” The pair ran across the stage for an electrifying live debut of the new single. Lavigne was a natural, with the pop-punk star stepping into her country moment with ease.
The song, which is featured on Smith’s Through the Smoke EP, originally came out as a solo single in February with him drinking away his sorrows alone. “I’ve tried to outrun the pain of a heartbreak in so many different ways,” he said in a statement. “And I feel like the only thing that can really get you through it is time… That’s kinda what the song is about. Trying everything you can to outrun the pain of a heartbreak, but you can’t do it.”
Smith — Amazon Music’s newest Breakthrough artist — had the idea to re-record it with Lavigne and screen-captured his texts to her pitching the “Complicated” singer on releasing the song on the same day they were performing on the ACMs. Naturally, this was all posted to Instagram.
This isn’t Lavigne’s first foray into country music. At the 2022 ACM Honors, she presented the ACM Poet’s Award to Shania Twain and performed Twain’s “No One Needs to Know.” And last summer Miranda Lambert welcomed Lavigne as her surprise guest at CMA Fest in Nashville, going on to perform “Sk8r Boi” and “Kerosene” together.
