How Wynonna Judd Honored Late Mom Naomi at CMT Music Awards 2023

Wynonna Judd shared a heartbreaking message to her late mom Naomi Judd at the 2023 CMT Music Awards.

While performing a rendition of Foreigner‘s song “I Want to Know What Love Is” with Ashley McBryde during the award show’s tribute to the late Judds singer, Wynonna reflected on her mother’s death. 

“Mama, you need to be here,” the singer, 58, said during the April 2 event in Austin, Texas. “And I miss you, and I love you and I don’t understand.”

It was an especially emotional moment as the last public event Naomi attended before her death was the 2022 CMT Music Awards last April. She died by suicide at age 76 later that month, one day before she and Wynonna were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame for their work as the musical duo The Judds.

“Well, it’s a year,” Wynonna told Entertainment Tonight backstage after her performance. “It’s an anniversary and we all have anniversaries. I’m not terminally unique. We all have something that we look at and go, ‘What the hell? What’s going on? I don’t understand.’ And that was my ‘I don’t understand.’ I went back and forth between hitting a really high note and being a diva or saying what was on my heart and it took over and so here we are.”