CMA Awards Rock Nashville
As award season slowly but surely comes to an end, there’s one night a year that country music fans look forward to: the CMA awards. Hosted by Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood for an eighth year in a row, this show never fails to disappoint. From celebrity collaborations to humorous jokes make by Paisley and Underwood, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.
The show started out with a Star Wars themed skit – Underwood, Paisley, and other various country stars such as Darius Rucker and Luke Bryan dressed up as different characters from Star Wars. The skit was “scrapped” at the beginning of the show but extremely comical.
As always, there were many performers who took the stage to perform their hit songs. Performers included Jason Aldean, Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley, Lindsey Sterling, Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Florida Georgia Line, Sam Hunt, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town, Maddie and Tae, Kacey Musgraves, Brad Paisley, Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, and Zac Brown Band.
The show began with Paisley and Underwood taking the stage to start their routine monologue of welcoming us to 2015. They played an original song about different dances and events from this year, including the “Whip” and “Nae-Nae” and Caitlyn Jenner.
Every year, Paisley and Underwood usually take some time to make jokes about celebrity scandals; this year’s was divorce. These jokes originally started with Kermit and Miss Piggy, and then shifted to Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert, who recently just split.
This continued with talk about Ashley Madison and “Naked Host Selfies.” PSA: Brad wasn’t really naked.
After that, the intro to the audience and performers took place, which included little stints of humor like the new nickname, “Sam Hunting,” being given to Sam Hunt.
William Shatner then took the stage to continue the Star Wars skit that was discontinued, which turned into a lovely moment of him singing “Girl Crush” by Little Big Town.
The first award of the night for single of the year was given to Little Big Town for the song “Girl Crush.” You can check out the full list of winners here. (VIA CMAworld.com)
The show continued with a live tribute to Little Jimmy Dickens, a country legend, which showed clips of his most famous CMA moments. It was said that his final wish was “to leave this world by making people laugh on stage.” The tribute finished by darkening the mood by pulling out an urn of what appeared to be Little Jimmy’s ashes, though there’s no proof that these were actually his ashes – Rest in peace Little Jimmy Dickens!
Celeb collaborations filled the room, and the show was kicked off by none other than Hank Williams Jr. and Eric Church singing “Are You Ready for the Country,” which led into another collaboration by John Mellon Camp and Keith Urban singing “Ain’t that America” and “John Cougar John Deere John 3:16.” Other collaborations included Chris Stapleton/Justin Timberlake, Thomas Rhett/Fall Our Boy, and Reba McIntyre /Brooks and Dunn. These collaborations are always my favorite parts of these award shows – it shows the diversity between music and how all different genres can come together to create one great product.
The rest of the show continued with jokes made about the Presidential election, performances, and the biggest award of the night, Entertainer of the Year, which went to none other than Luke Bryan.
The CMA awards never disappoint and every year they get even better than before!
