Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan perform ‘Cowboys Cry Too’ at the 2024 CMA Awards

Kelsea Ballerini and Noah Kahan slow things down.

The country singer and “Stick Season” artist took the stage at the 2024 CMA Awards on Wednesday, Nov. 20, to perform their emotional duet “Cowboys Cry Too.”

With coordinating white outfits and smoke drifting across the stage floor, Ballerini, 31, and Kahan, 27, brought on the waterworks during their performance.

“Cowboys cry too/They may not let ’em fall down in their hometown/Thinking they still got s— to prove/That well runs deep,” Ballerini sings in the chorus. “But when he shows his skin, lets me in/That’s when he’s the hardest on me/I never knew that/Cowboys cry too.”

Ballerini dropped the country ballad on June 28. In an interview on the Wayne D Show at the time, she revealed that she met Kahan at the 2024 Grammy Awards in February and he asked her about her The 2015 hit “Peter Pan”.

Then, when she was working on the song, she thought of Kahan because it honored “the men in my life who are emotional,” and she knew he’d be “so down to go there.”

“He wrote his verse and it just made the song a million times better,” she said.

See all of PEOPLE’s full CMA Awards coverage here.

In May, the pair teamed up for a medley performance of “Mountain with a View” and Kahan’s breakout hit “Stick Season” at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

“Cowboys Cry Too” served as the lead single for Ballerini’s new album Patterns. In October, she opened up to PEOPLE about the album’s inspiration.

“I think this thing happens when you turn 30, where you sort of evaluate your life,” Ballerini said. “And I came up for air, and I thought, ‘Okay, okay, let’s take a little inventory here. What in my life right now do I love? What feels uncomfortable? What have I contributed to both of these things? What is my patterns? And then what do I want to work on and edit on myself? And then in my closest, most interpersonal relationships, what do I want to edit and challenge and celebrate as well?’

She added, “It’s really thematic the whole record. It’s just a deep dive into the self-evaluation of entering your thirties.”

The 58th Annual CMA Awards will air live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, November 20 from 8pm to 11pm on ABC. The show will be streamed the following day on Hulu.