Grammys 2018: Country music stars honour Las Vegas victims

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Country music stars who performed at the Las Vegas festival that became the bloody setting of America’s deadliest mass shooting reunited Sunday night on stage at the Grammy Awards.

Brothers Osborne, Eric Church and Maren Morris all performed at the Route 91 country music festival before gunman Stephen Paddock, 64, fired into the crowd on October 1.

He killed 58 people and injured hundreds more, making it the worst mass shooting in modern US history. Paddock later turned the gun on himself.

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On Sunday, the singers performed a haunting version of Eric Clapton’s ballad Tears in Heaven seated side by side in front of a backdrop lit up with the names of the victims.

‘(We) are here to honor the memory of the beautiful music-loving souls all so cruelly taken from us,’ said Morris, paying tribute to not only the victims of the Las Vegas shooting but also the 22 people killed when a suicide bomb was detonated at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in May. 

The tribute prompted a wave of appreciation on social media, including from gun control advocates. 

Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt, tweeted about the tribute.

‘Thank you @MarenMorris, @brothersosborne, and @ericchurch for shining a light on our gun violence epidemic. We all need to do our part to make our communities safer. #Grammys #CourageToFight,’ Giffords tweeted.

Ahead of their performance, Morris spoke to Rolling Stone about potential solutions to mass shootings in America. 

‘Having this open conversation about gun rights would be a start, [as well as] changing legislation,’ she said. 

‘We need to protect ourselves and our children, and I want the county music community to get brave and talk about it,’ she added. 

‘I feel like the floodgates are starting to open, where people are comfortable talking about it. Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy like Vegas to start that conversation, but I’m hoping it impacts positive change from now on, so we never have to see this again,’ Morris told Rolling Stone. 

Morris said that she hopes their performance will ‘bring some feeling and some closure, not only to the victims’ families, but also to the survivors’.

Church, who was the headline act on the first night of the Route 91 festival and wrote the song Why Not Me in its immediate aftermath, said the music industry would always be united with its fans.

‘On October 1, all of country music was reminded in the most tragic way, the connection we share with our fans, and the healing power music will always provide,’ he said.