Darius Rucker and the reigning CMA Vocal Group of the Year Little Big Town announced the nominees for this year’s CMA Awards on ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday morning (September 3rd). Little Big Town picked up another nod in the Vocal Group category.
Luke Bryan, picked up three nominations, including Entertainer, Male Vocalist and Album of the Year for Crash My Party. He tweeted, “Thank y’all for my nominations. Amazing. Crazy stuff.”
Dierks Bentley picked up five nominations, including Male Vocalist, Album for Riser, Song for “I Hold On,” which Dierks wrote with Brett James and Single and Music Video of the Year for “Drunk on a Plane.
Eric Church is nominated for four awards, including Male Vocalist, Album for The Outsiders, Single and Song of the Year for “Give Me Back My Hometown,” which he wrote with Luke Laird.
Lady Antebellum has two nods, including Vocal Group and Music Video of the Year for “Bartender.”
Kacey Musgraves, who won New Artist of the Year in 2013, picked up three nominations this year, including Female Vocalist, Music Video and Song of the Year for “Follow Your Arrow,” which she co-wrote with Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally. She tweeted her reaction, “MUCHAS GRACIAS por mi CMA Nominations! Arrow nom for SOTY?! That’s a dream come true! They all are. Thanks.”
Vince Gill, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007, was nominated for Musical Event of the Year with Paul Franklin for Bakersfield.
Kip Moore picked up a nomination for New Artist of the Year. His reaction – “Just heard the news about cma nomination..no way to express my gratitude through a tweet. So many involved with this, so thanks to all!”
The 48th Annual CMA Awards will be broadcast live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena November 5th at 8pm ET on ABC.
AUDIO: Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley talks about their CMA nomination for Vocal Group of the Year. The band is also nominated for Music Video of the Year for “Bartender.”
Lady A (CMA Group 2014) OC: …fingers crossed. :53
“For the Group of the Year, it’s just become so competitive. As the years keep going, you have all these great groups coming in like The Band Perry and Eli Young Band, just absolutely making big splashes. So, I think for us now that we’ve been here, in the genre, seven, eight years now, to still be considered kind of fresh and part of these big groups means a lot. We try not to take it for granted, because we know it’s tough to kind of stay, I guess, on top in this genre right now. So, just to be considered one of those groups still means a lot. We want to always be in there. We’re hoping, got our fingers crossed this year, we’re just excited that with ‘Bartender’ having so much success, maybe there’s a chance that we can win this year and kind of take the award back, which would mean a lot. So, I don’t know. We’ll see. Fingers crossed.”
AUDIO: Dierks Bentley talks about his previous No. 1 hit, “I Hold On,” which is nominated for Song of the Year.
Dierks Bentley (I Hold On) 1 OC: …at the end. :33
“This is so me. It’s so personal, yet it’s so universal at the same time. These verses are snippets of my life and just things of my life, and it’s kind of a song about self-discovery too. Who am I after all these years? What’s important to me? Why do I do certain things that I do? Why do I hold on to certain things I hold onto? It’s a little bit of me trying to figure out who I am, and then in the choruses, it’s just who we are as Americans, as a people, as human beings I guess, you know there’s things that we really value and hold onto tight – faith, love and freedom. In a way, it’s kind of a love song too, you know, coming back and wrapping up at the end.”
AUDIO: Eric Church talks about letting the creativity breathe when he made his CMA-nominated album, The Outsiders.
Eric Church (making the album) OC: …as an album. :41
“I think a lot of when you make an album, you can’t go in with a preconceived notion of here’s what it is. You’ve got to be committed and take the time in the process to let the creativity to lead you there. And I think for us, I think that’s what we did. We let the songs dictate what was next. There’s two songs on this album that if you pull them out of the album, I like ‘em, [but] I just don’t love ‘em near as much as if you put ‘em back in because of the space that they give the songs in-between and what I feel when I listen to the record. By themselves? Fine, but in its spot, I love ‘em. It’s an album. It’s start to finish. Shuffle is gonna aggravate me on this if people play shuffle, because it’s not right. It needs to be listened to as an album.”
AUDIO: Kacey Musgraves is passionate about her song, “Follow Your Arrow,” which was nominated for both Music Video and Song of the Year at this year’s CMA Awards.
Kacey Musgraves (Follow Your Arrow) 2 OC: …accepting other people. :43
“I get like fired up when I talk about this song, because it’s so fun to play and it’s always interesting. I’m always wary whenever I play it a little bit because it does push some buttons, but people young and old seem to get a kick out of it and just appreciate that fact that like I’m showing love to people who don’t usually get that in our genre. And, too, it’s just funny because no matter what side of the coin you’re on, gay, straight, left, right, black, white, anything, I mean there’s always going to be an opposing opinion so it doesn’t matter. Like society is going to have an opinion either way. You’re never going to make society happy completely. I mean if you’re too fat, then you need to lose weight, but if you lose too much weight, then oh, she’s on crack. It’s just about being who are and accepting other people.”
