Brothers Osborne (being nominated) OC: (TJ) …but it really is. :26
JOHN: “One of the things I love about the country music genre is “It sounds cliché to say it’s an honor, but it really is that it’s a family. We’re all really, really close. We’re all a bunch of misfits thrown together. We’re all a little different, but we love one another and respect one another, and I’m just honored for the both of us to be a part of this awesome family.” TJ: “I will say to add on that, it sounds cliché to say it’s an honor to be nominated, but it really is.”

Brothers Osborne (I Don’t Remember Me (Before You) 1:05
“There was a bit of the song that was a little on the nose. I don’t – it started the first tag (sings) which was an idea Shane had. He showed up that day and goes ‘I don’t remember my life before I had my babies.’ He said, ‘I literally can’t think of who I was. I don’t remember who I was before [my] husband Michael.’ And we thought man, that is a really interesting thing. An incredible idea. I’m sure it’s been done to some extent, but I can’t really recall that subject being said that way. And so, we were all about it. We loved the idea and the concept, but when Jay [Joyce] heard it, he goes, ‘Man, I think it would be really cool to save the ‘before you’ till the end of the song and I instantly was like, ‘Man, I think that’s a killer idea.’ John and I were all about it. And so, it ends now (sings) it kind of goes in a turn around. You don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. ‘I don’t remember me,’ you keep hearing this, and then at the end is the reveal ‘I don’t remember me before you,’ which I think is great. It also made it problematic [for] the title of the song.”

Dierks Bentley (Bros O on Burning Man) OC: …great hang. :26
“I’m a huge fan of those guys. They’re friends. We play in a side band together, a ‘90s country cover band called the Hot Country Knights with a K for anyone who wants to look us up. So, we’re just pals, and it’s like this song feels like something that they would sing, you know? It feels like if they’d got this one before I did, they probably would’ve cut it. It was so easy. I just called ‘em up and sent the song and got a huge ‘Yes’ back from both of them right away. They came into the studio like two days later. It was just a great hang.”

Luke Bryan (STH idea) OC: …and Charles. :16
“Darius called me up and asked me to be a part of this song. When I was in college, I’m Going ‘Straight to Hell’ was one of the biggest college anthems that there was, and I was honored to be a part of this with Darius and Jason and Charles.”

Darius Rucker (STH) OC: …great day. :30
“This is an old Drivin’ ‘N Cryin’ song. It came out in ’89 when I was just playing clubs with Hootie [& the Blowfish]. It was a big song to us. It was a big song to everybody around us. It was a big Southern song, and I always thought it was a country song. Drivin’ ‘N Cryin’ is a big rock band, and I always thought it was a country song. I wanted to cut it and Charles told me I should cut it one day, and I just started calling my friends. I called Charles. I called Jason. I called Luke, and I said, ‘Hey man, I’m doing this song.’ They all loved the song, and we got to do a video for it. This is really cool, man. It’s been a great day.”

Kacey 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.”

Carrie Underwood (Love Wins) 3 OC: …one another. 57
“One of the things that I was very careful about when we were writing the song, I’m like I don’t want to make it sound too easy because it sounds so easy. ‘Let’s just all love each other and get along. Oh okay, I never thought of that. Let’s try that.’ I feel like it maybe there’s a song on the radio or somebody says something, and you have a conversation with somebody that maybe you’re like today I’m going to try seeing things from a different point of view, then you’re one step closer, even if it’s just a little step. We’re just one step closer to each other. So, I love the fact that I feel like this song is kind of saying no matter who you are, what you feel, what you think – we didn’t want it to be political. We didn’t want it to be polarizing. We wanted it just to acknowledge that we’re in a broken world. We’re all human beings. We all deserve love. We all deserve respect and we all should try to show that to one another.”

Maddie & Tae (Friends Don’t) OC: …likes it. [laughs] :22
“So, the story behind our song ‘Friends Don’t’ is actually my sister’s story. My little sister back home in Texas was kind of dating this guy and they’re kind of in the friend’s zone, but they like each other, but they really didn’t know what was going on. And so, Tae and I got inspired by her story and wrote it. She kinda gets frustrated when we write songs about her, but I know she secretly likes it.” [laughs]