Now you probably didn’t know this, but the Country Music Awards were held tonight in Nashville (of course, Nashville; Boston, Mass. and Pierre, SD were both booked). Now, now, don’t panic. It’s not the CMAs. I know, that scared me too. The Country Music Awards are actually in November. Oh, so it’s the Academy of Country Music awards that happened tonight? Wow, I can’t wait to see who won. What’s that you say? It’s not the ACM awards either?

It’s all pretty confusing for a music genre about the same 5 things: drinking (usually beer, but occasionally a whiskey such as bourbon), trucks (pickup, farm tractors and tractor-trailers all fit here), leaving your hometown (which is sad at first, especially when you are taken advantage of by some Northerner in the music video), an ex-anything (usually girlfriend, but also boyfriend, sometimes dog, horse, boss, or dignity), or, lastly, returning to your hometown (with or without beer or whiskey or your truck with or without that worthless ex-wife of yours who never listened to your ambitions about leaving this town anyway). These five key elements are to country as the same 3 guitar chords are to Green Day.

Tonight was the Country Music Television Awards, or for those who love acronyms (YKWYA), the CMT Awards. Of course, for those in the know, you never, never refer to Country Music Television as Country Music Television, it’s CMT. It wouldn’t be so cool if you had to say the whole name. Any channel worth its salt goes by an acronym. I mean, consider ABC, NBC, CBS (FOX is actually Fox, not an acronym); surely they’re onto something. American Movie Classics, er, AMC, did it. As did TLC before being known as the rather nerdy “The Learning Channel.” Yuck. Learning is for sissies. Black Entertainment Television also thought this would be a good idea and went with, you know it, BET. Sure, name your network after one of the world’s top vices, which is frowned upon by every major religion and a third of US citizens. At least it fits better on a business card now. Or, consider the Outdoor Life Network, which first went with OLN and found too many people wanted to call it O-Len, which reminded the CEO too much of Owen, so they gave up on acronyms altogether and went with Versus. (PS: In case you missed it, the O-Len thing was bullshit, but I wanted to see how far I could take it).

Well, if you’re still reading, I’ll fill you in on some CMT Awards information. First, the hosts…you get a double dip of stars…Billy Ray Cyrus and Miley Cyrus. For those not familiar with these two, you were either under a rock in 1992 and missed Achy Breaky Heart (which I will embed here simply to ensure it sticks in your head as it is in mine now) or are currently under a rock and have never heard of Miley or Hanna Montana, who are, of course, the same person. You may also be someone who has lived under a rock since 1992 and remain trapped. If this is you, leave a comment and I’ll try to send help. In the meantime, suffer with this video and lament that death hasn’t visited despite your pleas.

Since the show is over now, I guess a complete report would include something about the winners. Of course, I’m rarely complete. However, the pickens are too good to pass up, so I’ll comment on a few. On the other hand, you could just read the Live Blog from the event put together by CMT itself. They may know beer and whiskey, but apparently nothing about chronological order.

Onto the awards…first, there’s an award called “CMT Music Awards Wide Open Country Video of the Year.” I don’t know what that means and don’t care. What I do care about it is that Alison Krauss (never heard of her) and Robert Plant (yes, that Robert Plant) won this thing. What’s more amazing to me is that apparently Plant thought it would be a good idea to wear a Willie Nelson mask for the promo photos for this video. I mean, how else do you make a Brit more endearing to Country’s demographic? You be the judge.

The winner of the “CMT Music Awards USA Weekend Breakthrough Video of the Year” was also announced. The winner was Kellie Pickler of American Idol “fame.” The loser was “Subtle Commercialism.” Thanks for sponsoring this USA Today. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

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Posted on April 15th, 2008 by Jonathan - Everyone But You
Filed under: Celebrities, music

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