Tim McGraw performed his single "Humble and Kind" at the 2016 ACM Awards Sunday night.

It started as an intimate performance, with the lights low and McGraw, his mic and a stool centered in the middle of thousands of fans waving glowing bracelets. As the song continued, however, dozens and dozens of people -- spanning ages, genders, professions and ethnicities -- filtered in to fill the stage behind McGraw, and the performance burst to life.

McGraw had crowd-sourced parts of his performance, calling on his fans to submit photos of themselves holding a sign that says what being humble and kind means to them. Surrounded on stage by fans, McGraw sang the final choruses as photographs of submission favorites -- including signs that read "grace," "honor," and "hugs!" -- played on the screens behind him.

As for the song itself, McGraw thinks its message -- which can be summed up in the lyric "I know you got mountains to climb, but / Always stay humble and kind" -- is something worth sharing.

"I just thought it was a song that needed to be heard,” he explained during a panel at CRS 2016. “When you find a song that says something and a song that means something to you, those are always special. You have fun songs, and you have songs that you do because you like the feel and songs that you do because you like the lyric. But I feel a responsibility to do music, make music, that I’m proud of.”

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