Country’s Biggest Night!
After my extremely busy weekend (more about that in my next post!), I’m just not up to the task of doing a live blog about the Academy of Country Music Awards like I did last year. I had a lot of fun doing it at that time, but this year we were lucky enough to share our awards experience with friends at our house, and I want to be a good host (well, as good as I can be with both eyes and ears on the awards show!). It’s bad enough that I had to practically kick out people who were here for our voluntary monthly organizational meetings so I could watch the awards show when it started at 8 – hehe. I was accused of “chomping at the bit”, to get to the awards show – but then again, I did sacrifice and miss the entire red carpet coverage… so I guess a point was made – I WAS chomping at the bit, so to speak!
Watch the show we did, and it was great – although I didn’t win the tally for the most awards guessed ahead of time. My picks for winners of the most popular categories are following in blue with the winners in bold (the ones I got right are in bold blue and my commentary is in italics. I’ll let you know how our guests and I did at the end:
Entertainer of the Year
• Kenny Chesney
• Brad Paisley
• George Strait
• Carrie Underwood
• Keith Urban
Big shocker here, for real. Kenny has won this one for the past 4 years straight, so you can’t blame me for voting the way I did – SHOCKER he didn’t win tonight!
Top Male Vocalist
• Kenny Chesney
• Toby Keith
• Brad Paisley
• George Strait
• Keith Urban
Top Female Vocalist
• Miranda Lambert
• Heidi Newfield
• Taylor Swift
• Carrie Underwood
• Lee Ann Womack
Top Vocal Group
• Lady Antebellum
• Little Big Town
• Rascal Flatts
• Randy Rogers Band
• The Lost Trailers
A given – Rascal Flatts has a ton of talent and are one of my favorite bands!
Top Vocal Duo
• Big & Rich
• Brooks & Dunn
• Joey + Rory
• Montgomery Gentry
• Sugarland
Album of the Year
• Carnival Ride – Carrie Underwood
• Back When I Knew It All – Montgomery Gentry
• Fearless – Taylor Swift
• That Lonesome Song – Jamey Johnson
• Troubadour – George Straight
So there you have it. I didn’t do so well, compared to past my past performances guessing on country music awards shows – I got 4/10 correct. But we had a great time watching… some highlights include Trace Adkins’ performance with the West Point Glee Club, very moving, especially because the performance was introduced by a young veteran in a wheelchair. Another highlight, Carrie Underwood’s humongous dress during her resurrection of Randy Travis’ “I Told You So”. (notice they didn’t show her getting on or off stage in that dress – think she was “snapped” into it? That thing was HUGE!!!)… But I guess I’m a country fan-child of the 80’s and 90’s, sigh. The awards shows during that time period were so much more exciting to me because of the awesome music that was performed, unlike tonight. Just another sign that I’m getting old, I guess, since I much preferred our friends’ conversation tonight to the live performances… just nothing special on the modern country artists’ part, I guess…
But congrats to those who won, and it was a great show to watch and predict, even if I didn’t do so well. Until the CMA’s in the fall – maybe I will do a LIVE blogcast for that one – we’ll see!