The 52nd Annual CMA Awards are a little over a week away, and we’ll be highlighting different categories. Today, we give you the Entertainer of the Year category, which includes Chris Stapleton, Keith Urban and Luke Bryan, as well as Jason Aldean and Kenny Chesney.
Stapleton tops the list of CMA finalists with five nominations, including Entertainer of the Year, as well as Single and Song of the Year for “Broken Halos,” Male Vocalist and Album of the Year for From A Room: Volume 2. With all of these nominations, he adds to his previous 11 nominations and seven wins. He lands his third consecutive nod for Entertainer of the Year. He previously won Album for his first two solo albums, Traveller, awarded in 2015, and From A Room: Volume 1, awarded in 2017. Stapleton also receives his fourth consecutive nomination for Male Vocalist of the Year, a category he remains undefeated in, having won the past three years.
Luke is once again nominated for the CMA Entertainer of the Year award, which he has won twice before in 2014 and 2015. The Georgia native says winning his first CMA Entertainer of the Year award was life-altering. “Winning my first CMA Entertainer of the Year award is something that I’ll never forget. It’s all of those memories of everything it took to get here and all the sacrifices and all the honkytonks and the late-night concerts and moving to Nashville and leaving your family and your friends, it all came together on that night,” says Luke. “To get that from your peers of fellow country music artists was pretty amazing. You never forget it. You forever feel vindicated and you feel appreciated and you feel like you’re a member of a club, and you know no matter how long you live that you left an indelible mark on this industry based on how you go about it, how you entertain and perform.” As a matter of fact, his first CMA Entertainer award was his first ever CMA Award he’d ever won.
Keith picked up the CMA Entertainer of the Year Award in 2005, and it’s a moment he will cherish the rest of his life. “What I remember about the Entertainer of the Year category in 2005 was that first feeling when people say it’s just an honor to be nominated, and I thought, ‘I know what that means! I know what that feels like,’ because for me it was a huge honor to be nominated so soon into my recording career,” says Keith. “To be in that category, it just felt unbelievably quick for me. And then when they read my name out as the winner, I think I actually said, ‘I thought I was just rounding out the category,’ because [laughs] I thought you’ve got to have four or five people in the category. I truly did not expect that to happen. It was just such a magical night.” Keith has the chance to take home several awards going into this year’s CMA Awards, including Entertainer, Male Vocalist and Album of the Year for Graffiti U. 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, 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.
Chris Stapleton (success is a dream) OC: …larger dream. :15
“It’s an unimaginable fairy tale of a thing, really. We’re so proud just to get to make music and go out and play it for people and make records, that’s the dream. And when you have all these other things that people are nice enough to give you, that makes the dream an even larger dream.”
Luke Bryan (winning 1st CMA Entertainer of the Year) OC: …big deal for me. :55
“Definitely looking back and winning my first CMA Entertainer of the Year award is something that I’ll never forget. It’s all of those memories of everything it took to get here and all the sacrifices and all the honkytonks and the late-night concerts and moving to Nashville and leaving your family and your friends, it all came together on that night. To get that from your peers of fellow country music artists was pretty amazing. You never forget it. You forever feel vindicated and you feel appreciated and you feel like you’re a member of a club, and you know no matter how long you live that you left an indelible mark on this industry based on how you go about it, how you entertain and perform. It was a big deal for me.”
Luke Bryan (CMA Entertainer win) OC: …hard to describe. 1:05
“To try to understand you would win your first CMA Award and it’s the Entertainer of the Year…I have longed and sought after many years to get one of these in my hands. To get the respect of the CMA Board and all of its voters and win this is a ginormous deal, something I could not express out on stage when I was winning it, but I can’t help but in the back of my mind want some of that respect from this body of people. So, I’m just really humbled. I think about just the hard work it took to get here, and I’m really just so blessed that this is from the CMA and I’ll never take a second of it for granted. I, honestly from the bottom of my heart, I go out on stage every night and try to sing it and perform it and entertain it like it’s my last and now, it’s like, Whew! It’s hard to describe.”
Keith Urban (winning EOY in 2005) OC: …magical night. :43
“What I remember about the Entertainer of the Year category in 2005 was that first feeling when people say it’s just an honor to be nominated, and I thought, ‘I know what that means! I know what that feels like,’ because for me it was a huge honor to be nominated so soon into my recording career. To be in that category, it just felt unbelievably quick for me. And then when they read my name out as the winner, I think I actually said, ‘I thought I was just rounding out the category,’ because [laughs] I thought you’ve got to have four or five people in the category. I truly did not expect that to happen. It was just such a magical night.”