Why does Eric Church wear sunglasses on stage? Singer honors Hurricane Helene victims at CMAS 2024
On Wednesday, November 20, Eric Church took to the stage at the 2024 Country Music Association (CMA) Awards and performed his latest single, Darkest Hour, dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Helene and the flooding that ravaged his home state of North Carolina.
Church said in a press release that he dedicated his performance to the "unsung heroes" who rose up during the catastrophe. His performance at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena was accompanied by a choir, a strings section, and horns. The country singer sported a black velvet blazer and his signature shades.
Church is widely recognized for always wearing a pair of aviators everywhere he went. He has revealed that this was because his eyes did not do too well with lubrication or bright lights on stages.
In a 2012 AXS TV backstage interview at a Levon Helm benefit concert, Eric Church was asked the reason behind his persistent choice of eyewear. He explained:
"I wear contacts, and my eyes don’t do real well with lubrication. We would play all these bars and clubs and the bar can lights… I’m 6’3” so they’d bake my contacts and they’d fall out. So I ended up being blind on stage.
"Somebody suggested to put glasses on, and it worked. What’s funny is that it stuck. It was never thought out. We never thought, ‘This would be good.’ We actually at the time thought, ‘This is not good,’ you know? But it ended up being a thing."
Furthermore, in an interview with CMT, Church clarified that he usually does not wear shades if he isn't playing shows. Whenever he is playing shows, the singer reiterated that his eyes did not do too well in bright lights and admitted that it "doesn’t feel right" if he didn't have them on.
"'Darkest Hour' is a song dedicated to the unsung heroes"— Eric Church
During the 2024 CMAs, Luke Bryan introduced Eric Church onto the stage. He then delivered an emotional and soulful rendition of his track Darkest Hour while strumming a guitar and images from the catastrophe played behind his choir.
In a press statement regarding his performance at the CMAs, Church said:
"'Darkest Hour' is a song dedicated to the unsung heroes, the people who show up when the world’s falling apart. This is for the folks who show up in the hardest times, offering a hand when it’s most needed, and standing tall when others can’t. Even in your darkest hour, they come running. When the night’s at its blackest, this is for those who are holding the light, guiding the lost and pulling us through."
Eric Church released Darkest Hour, his first track in three years, in October 2024. The Western North Carolina native gave away all of his publishing royalties for his song to the people of his home state. Later that month, Church partnered up with Luke Combs and co-headlined Concert for Carolina.
The concert, attended by around 82,000 people, took place at Charlotte, North Carolina's Bank of America Stadium and raised around $24.5 million towards Hurricane Helene relief.
Apart from building from the ground up, Church was also dedicated to long-term community rebuilding, including his 'A Blueprint for the Blue Ridge.' The project's initial goal is to build 100 new homes for people from Avery County, North Carolina, who were displaced due to Hurricane Helene. In an interview with The Tennessean, Eric Church noted:
"In this country, we're good at initially providing people in need with food, water, and diapers. But we're not so good at entirely rebuilding communities. When you're not a developer and taking on the project of trying to build 100 homes in Western North Carolina, it's an emotional and time-consuming process. I'm working 15 hours a day to use the funds raised by (the "Concert for Carolina")."
Eric Church further admitted that this was the busiest he'd ever been in his life.
