Miranda Lambert poses with her four awards.Singer Miranda Lambert won four Country Music Association Awards and Luke Bryan took home the top honour as entertainer of the year as US politics and the absence of Taylor Swift played supporting roles in the televised ceremony.
Lambert, 30, who led all nominees with nine nods, earned her record fifth female vocalist of the year award.
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe I’m standing here. I can’t believe this is my life,” an emotional Lambert said accepting the award she has won five consecutive years. “Damn it! I cry every time.”
The Texan also won CMA Awards for album of the year for Platinum, single of the year for the wistful Automatic as well as sharing the musical event of the year award with Aussie singer Keith Urban for We Were Us.
Bryan, 38, earned his first CMA on the back of five hits from his 2013 album Crash My Party.
“I have long sought to have one of these in my hands,” Bryan told reporters.
The 48th annual CMA awards show, which competes with the springtime’s Academy of Country Music Awards for prestige and television audience, is one of the top promotional events on the country music calendar. Winners are chosen by the CMA’s 6,000 members.
Blake Shelton, Lambert’s husband, also won his fifth consecutive male vocalist of the year award.
Hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood’s show opening drew attention to the absence of Swift, who has shed her country roots for pop music, with a comical song about ‘Postpartum Taylor Swift Disorder’, or PPTSD.
Underwood and Paisley’s joke that President Barack Obama not caring about PPTSD contributed to Republicans winning the US Senate on Tuesday, drawing strong cheers from the audience.
The duo sang Quarantine to the tune of Dolly Parton’s classic, Jolene, poking fun at nurse Kaci Hickox, who defied her Ebola quarantine order. Paisley drew criticism on social media for a joke referencing TV sitcom Black-ish, about an upper-middle-class African-American family.
I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe I’m standing here. I can’t believe this is my life
“If you were looking for Black-ish tonight, yeah, this ain’t it. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy White-ish,” Paisley said about the mostly white world of country music.
Kacey Musgraves’ Follow Your Arrow won the songwriters’ award song of the year, sharing the award with fellow songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.
Noted for its gay-friendly message and references to marijuana, Follow Your Arrow is a thematic outlier in the conservative-leaning country music world.
“Do you guys realise what this means for country music?” Musgraves said when accepting the award with Clark and McAnally. “Our genre was built on simple good songs about real life and that’s what this was.”
Dierks Bentley won best music video for his hit Drunk on a Plane. Florida Georgia Line won vocal duo of the year, while Little Big Town took home the glass CMA award for vocal group.
Winners in key categories:
Entertainer of the year: Luke Bryan
Single of the year: Automatic,Miranda Lambert
Album of the year: Platinum, Miranda Lambert
Song of the year: Follow your Arrow, written by Kacey Musgraves, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally
Female vocalist of the year: Miranda Lambert
Male vocalist of the year: Blake Shelton
Vocal group of the year: Little Big Town
Vocal duo of the year: Florida Georgia Line
Musical event of the year: We were us, Keith Urban, featuring Miranda Lambert
Musician of the year: Mac McAnally on guitar
Music video of the year: Drunk on a Plane, Dierks Bentley
New artist of the year: Brett Eldredge