Dierks Bentley’s “Burning Man” with Brothers Osborne and Chris Stapleton’s “Millionaire” are among the nominees for Single of the Year, while Kacey Musgraves’s “Rainbow” is up for Song of the Year. “Burning Man,” “Rainbow” and Eric Church’s “Desperate Man” are all up for Music Video of the Year.
Dierks Bentley scored three nominations including Single and Music Video of the Year for “Burning Man,” which features Brothers Osborne. He’s also nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year. The song earns Dierks his third nomination in both Single and Music Video.
Kacey Musgraves earns a fourth nomination in Song of the Year. She last won the category in 2014 with “Follow Your Arrow.” “Rainbow” is also her third nomination for Music Video. Kacey, who will perform with Willie Nelson on Wednesday night’s show, is also nominated for Female Vocalist of the Year.
Chris, who has 16 prior nominations and 10 wins, earns his third nomination for Single of the Year for “Millionaire.” He is also nominated for Entertainer of the Year, his fourth nomination in the category, and Male Vocalist of the Year.
Eric Church has his third nod in the category of Music Video of the Year for “Some of It.,” which follows up the storyline first shown in the clip for his smash song, “Desperate Man.” He is also nominated for Entertainer and Album of the Year for Desperate Man.
The 53rd Annual CMA Awards, hosted by Carrie with special co-hosts Reba McEntire and Dolly Parton, will be broadcast live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday (November 13th) at 8pm ET on ABC.
Audio / DIERKS BENTLEY TALKS ABOUT GETTING BROTHERS OSBORNE TO TAKE PART IN THE SONG, “BURNING MAN."
DownloadDierks Bentley (Burning Man) OC: …really well. :24
“I’d had this song for about two years. It’s been a song I’ve been holding on for a little while. I just love that song. I could really relate to the lyrics. In the studio, Jedd Hughes put down this great guitar part, and I thought, ‘Man, John would be really cool on that,’ and then, obviously TJ has a, I love his singing. Great voice. I would’ve asked them to be on it regardless, I really would have, but the fact they’re on tour with us just makes it all that sweeter. Those guys are the perfect group to do it with and they definitely took it to a new spot and now we get to sing it every night on stage, so it worked out really well.”
Audio / DIERKS BENTLEY TALKS ABOUT THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES ACTION ON HIS "BURNING MAN" VIDEO WITH BROTHERS OSBORNE.
DownloadDierks Bentley (Burning Man video shoot) OC: …turned out well. 1:28
“The ‘Burning Man’ video shoot was, it was difficult. Sometimes you have to sacrifice comfort for, obviously, the view, for the way it turns out, for the area you’re shooting the video in and trying to get these great shots, and your comfort is secondary, which I’m totally fine with because I just want a great video that supports a great song. I’m always nervous making videos, because if I’m putting a song out there as a single, I feel like it’s a very special song, and I don’t want the video possibly make the song not be as good as it is, you know what I mean? If somebody sees the video and they don’t like the song as much, it’d be terrible so I’m willing to do whatever it takes. In this case, it meant shooting at a body of water out by Palm Springs that’s totally dead. It’s called the Salton Sea, and it used to be a place where Frank Sinatra would be waterskiing. It was this beautiful place. I don’t know what happened, but the water…the whole thing is completely dead. There’s no fish living in there. It smells terrible. It’s superhot. There’s rattlesnakes under every single rock. We lost about four or five people from heat stroke; TJ’s boots were like melting into the rocks. [laughs] It was unbelievable. I felt so bad for those guys, because when you do a duet with somebody, you’re kind of signing on to do more than just singing on a track. You’re gonna be there for awards shows, for videos, but they were great as they always are. I love those guys. It turned out great. It looks awesome on TV, which is the whole point. It was an interesting place to do a video, but we were nominated for a CMT [Award], so it all turned out well.”
Audio / KACEY MUSGRAVES SAYS SHE WROTE “RAINBOW” AS A MEMO TO HERSELF, BUT SAYS IT CAN HELP PEOPLE ACTUALLY SEE THE SUN THROUGH THE CLOUDS.
DownloadKacey Musgraves (Rainbow) 1 OC: …make it through. :48
“The song ‘Rainbow’ was actually written a handful of years ago as sort of a little bit of a memo to myself. I think we can all get stuck in a mindset that things are never gonna improve or you can easily focus on kind of the bad parts of whatever you’re going through and not really realize that if you pulled your head above the water you’d see that the sun is actually shining and that everything’s actually okay. I think one of the reasons that people may relate to the song a lot is because, though it was written to myself, I think that it can take the shape of like whatever someone’s going through – whether it’s coming out and not having the support or just any kind of a situation that they don’t feel like they may make it through.”
Audio / CHRIS STAPLETON SAYS HE’S ALWAYS LOVED THE SONG, “MILLIONAIRE,” WHICH WAS WRITTEN AND RECORDED BY KEVIN WELCH FOR HIS 2002 ALBUM OF THE SAME NAME.
DownloadChris Stapleton (Millionaire) OC: …time to do it. :15
“I love that song. I would always sit around the house playing that song to myself on guitar. It’s fun to play. It’s fun to sing. It’s a great melody. It’s great lyrics. It’s great everything. To me, that’s a great song, and I just loved it so it was time to do it.”
Audio / ERIC CHURCH TALKS ABOUT HIS SONG "SOME OF IT."
DownloadEric Church (Some of It coming of age) OC: …figure it out. :56
“That’s a song, a coming-of-age song, it’s an adult song. It’s adult music. If you listen to the thematics in that and what it’s about, it’s about being older and having some wisdom about you. I think that’s something that I appreciate in my fan base now that early on probably wasn’t there. We were young and drunk and fighting and stupid. But I think now to see them grow – to see the fan base grow – it’s just one of those songs that came along at the right time. And again, it was such a blessing that happened. It wasn’t going to be on the album. It was just one of those freak things that I put it on the album, the last song on the album. The album was done, and all of a sudden it becomes the pillar, one of the pillars on the album. I think again, you go back to it’s one of the great things about music, is you just never know what’s going to happen until it’s all said and done. You can try to plan all you want to, but you’ll probably not going to figure it out.”
