Chris Stapleton’s From a Room: Volume 2, Dierks Bentley’s The Mountain, Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour and Keith Urban’s Graffiti U are all nominated for CMA Album of the Year.
Chris, who tops the list of CMA finalists with five nominations, has previously won the Album category for his first two solo albums – Traveller (2015) and From a Room: Volume 1 (2017).
Dierks earned his sixth career nomination for Album of the Year alongside producers Ross Copperman, Jon Randall Stewart and Arturo Buenahora Jr., while also marking his fifth consecutive nomination for Male Vocalist of the Year. He also lands a nod alongside Brothers Osborne for Musical Event of the Year for their collaboration “Burning Man,” Bentley’s third nomination in the category. He won Musical Event in 2016 for his song “Different For Girls” (Feat. Elle King). With this year’s nominations, Bentley collects 24 total career nominations.
Kacey picked up another nomination for Album of the Year, having previously been nominated for this same award in 2013 for Same Trailer Different Park and in 2015 for Pageant Material. She won New Artist of the Year in 2013 and Song of the Year for “Follow Your Arrow” in 2014. In 2016, she won the CMA International Achievement Award. This year, she’s also nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year.
Keith earned three more CMA nominations, including Album of the Year. This year marks Keith Urban’s 14th nomination for Male Vocalist of the Year, 11th nomination in the Entertainer of the Year category, and his sixth nomination in the Album of the Year category for Graffiti U, bringing his career nominations to 45 with 11 total wins.
The 52nd Annual CMA Awards, hosted by Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, will be broadcast live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena November 14th at 8pm ET on ABC.
ALBUM OF THE YEAR
(Award goes to Artist and Producer(s))
From a Room: Volume 2 – Chris Stapleton
Golden Hour – Kacey Musgraves
Graffiti U – Keith Urban
Life Changes – Thomas Rhett
The Mountain – Dierks Bentley
Audio / Chris Stapleton talks about making records.
DownloadChris Stapleton (making records) OC: …top to bottom. :37
“We’re all incredibly fortunate that out on the road that the people who come out to the shows dig that deep. It sure is a powerful thing when you can pull out an album cut and have everybody sing along and have somebody be excited about it or watch that be somebody’s song they were hoping you were going to play that night. I care about the album, quite a bit, and I kind of learned that from Tom Petty. He made my favorite record of all time, which was Wild Flowers, and that album really made me appreciate the album, top to bottom. I try to think about that record a lot when I’m making records, and that’s the way I feel about albums. I want them to be good, top to bottom.”
Audio / DIERKS BENTLEY WAS INSPIRED BY TELLURIDE TO WRITE AND RECORD HIS CMA NOMINATED ALBUM, THE MOUNTAIN.
DownloadDierks Bentley (album inspired by Telluride) 2 OC: …it was magic. :53
“I just had this crazy idea to bring some songwriters out there and let them go for hikes and walk around town and just hang and see if they can sense that same intangible vibe that I was sensing, and they did. We jumped right into it and it was really, really special. And everyone immediately starts talking about how can we start getting back out here again, because it’s one of those places you just like never want to leave. Ross said, ‘We should come back out here to make the record,’ and we all kinda laughed about it, but it planted the seed. So, I came back a few months later with a different set of guys and girls, musicians, and we recorded the album out there.” It’s one of those things where you just kind of follow your gut, just keep your heart open to ideas and see what you’re feeling, and once you get that little, tiny feeling, you’ve got to go for it, just like that gut instinct of I want to be a country singer. It’s that little seed that if you believe in it, you’ve got to go for it, try it, so that’s what we did with this album, and it was magic.”
Audio / KACEY MUSGRAVES TALKS ABOUT THE TITLE OF HER CMA NOMINATED ALBUM, GOLDEN HOUR.
DownloadKacey Musgraves (Golden Hour title) OC: …this record. :34
“The title Golden Hour just seemed to sum up this chapter of my life perfectly. I mean not only am I from a town called Golden, Texas, but leading up to making this record, there’s been a lot of beauty in my atmosphere and in my world. I love the picture that pops in my head when I hear that title. It’s also an actual song on the record, but it’s just this warm, golden feeling that I’m really happy to have in my life, and I found it to be the perfect title for this record.”
Audio / Keith Urban talks about the decision to name his latest album, Graffiti U.
DownloadKeith Urban (Graffiti U name) OC: …that to me. :53
“The previous two albums I did – Fuse and Ripcord – denoted a kind of energy, and so those titles were chosen for that. And I had some energy-driven titles in mind for this album too, but as the record started to reveal itself to me, the word ‘graffiti’ kept coming to me out of the blue. I’ve always loved that word, loved the sound of the word, and then I loved the fact that it’s art-driven. When I think of graffiti, I think of self-expression, personal expression, absolutely personal expression whether you’re painting something on the side of a building in a city or whether you’re painting ‘Billy Bob Loves Charlene’ on the side of an overpass [laughs], it’s all graffiti and it’s all free and pure and very personal, and I thought this record feels like that to me.”
