Entertainment, Music - Air Force Times

Kenny Chesney, Taylor Swift vie for CMA’s top prize

Kenny Chesney will vie for a record-setting fifth entertainer of the year trophy at the CMA Awards in November, and his competition will include 19-year-old blockbuster Taylor Swift, Country Music Hall of Famer George Strait and singer-songwriter-guitarists Brad Paisley and Keith Urban.

The CMA nominations were announced Sept. 9 on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program (ABC will carry the awards live from Nashville at 7 p.m. Nov. 11) and on a Country Music Television special.

Brad Paisley, who will co-host the November show with Carrie Underwood, leads the pool with six nominations, while Urban, Swift, Jamey Johnson and the Zac Brown Band have four.

Lee Ann Womack and Darius Rucker announced the Good Morning America portion of the nominations, and Rucker was pleased to find himself among the five male vocalist nominees. He will seek to become the first African-American to win the CMA male vocalist race since Charley Pride in 1972. Reigning male vocalist Paisley will try for his third straight vocalist prize. Others in the category include Urban, Strait and Chesney. Strait has triumphed five times as top male vocalist, tying him with Vince Gill for the all-time lead in that category.

Swift, who has sold more albums in 2009 than anyone except Michael Jackson, is in the female vocalist race alongside Underwood, Reba McEntire, Martina McBride and Miranda Lambert. She is the first female entertainer nominee since Faith Hill in 2000, when Swift was 10 years old. She balances her excitability with some emotional caution when it comes to nominations.

“I don’t think it’s going to threaten your career if you don’t win an award, and if you put too much emphasis on things you can’t control, that’s when you get overwhelmed,” Swift said the day before the nominations announcement. “But you do hope for nominations and for awards. Getting the ACM [Academy of Country Music] award for album of the year [in April] was one of the best moments of my life. But if I hadn’t won it, I wouldn’t be any less proud of my album.”

That album, “Fearless,” won a nod for best album of the year, along with works by Paisley, Urban, Sugarland and Jamey Johnson.

Johnson previously won a CMA prize for co-writing 2007 song of the year “Give It Away.” He’s nominated as a performer this year for the first time, for album, single, song and in the new artist category alongside Rucker, Randy Houser, Jake Owen and the Zac Brown Band.

Rascal Flatts and Sugarland will be heavy favorites in the vocal group and duo categories, while the single and song categories will be tougher to handicap: Both single and song categories include the Zac Brown Band’s “Chicken Fried,” Johnson’s “In Color,” Billy Currington’s “People Are Crazy” and Paisley’s “Then,” with Lady Antebellum’s “I Run To You” also getting a single category inclusion and the Randy Travis-penned, Carrie Underwood-sung “I Told You So” making it into the song race.

The Musical Event of the Year category features out-of-the-ordinary combinations, none more so than “Old Enough” which found rock band the Raconteurs collaborating with eight-time CMA award-winner Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe. The Raconteurs are led by Jack White, who produced Country Music Hall of Famer Loretta Lynn’s Grammy-winning Van Lear Rose album in 2004.

Others in the event race include Brooks & Dunn with Reba McEntire, Kenny Chesney with Mac McAnally, Lee Ann Womack with George Strait and Carrie Underwood with Randy Travis.

McAnally also won a nomination for best musician, with drummer Eddie Bayers, steel guitarist Paul Franklin, guitarist-producer Dann Huff and guitar wizard Brent Mason.