Winners
Entertainer: Blake Shelton
Female Vocalist: Miranda Lambert
Male Vocalist: Blake Shelton
Vocal Group: Little Big Town
New Artist: Hunter Hayes
Vocal Duo: Thompson Square
Musician: Mac McAnally
Album: Eric Church, Chief
Single: Little Big Town, “Pontoon”
Song: Miranda Lambert & Blake Shelton, “Over You”
Musical Event: Tim McGraw & Kenny Chesney, “Feel Like a Rock Star”
While the rest of the country fixates on “Nashville,” the 46th annual Country Music Association Awards air live from Music City with equal drama and ridiculousness November 1 at 7 p.m. CST. The CU staff picked and predicted the awards below. Chime in with your thoughts, and check back for our live blog on Thursday night!
Entertainer of the Year 
Should Win:
Will Win:
Pam Tillis & Lorrie Morgan
Grits & Glamour Tour
Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center
Bowling Green, Kentucky
October 13, 2012
This past Saturday night, I had the immense pleasure of seeing two favorite artists of mine – contemporary country legends Pam Tillis and Lorrie Morgan – perform live in concert at the newly completed Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The SKyPAC is a beautifully decorated 1800-seat venue with excellent acoustics, thus providing an ideal atmosphere for Tillis and Morgan’s fantastic Grits & Glamour show.
In some aspects, Chris Young’s hook-heavy new single may come off as a calculated bid to regain the airplay he unjustly lost from country radio’s tepid response to the excellent but underappreciated “Neon.” Unfortunately, it’s hard to call him out for peddling safe material when I can’t get my toe to stop tapping.
So, Billboard decided to completely change its chart methodology today:
Billboard unveils new methodology today for the long-standing Hot Country Songs, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Latin Songs charts. Each receive a major consumer-influenced face-lift, as digital download sales (tracked by Nielsen SoundScan) and streaming data (tracked by Nielsen BDS from such services as Spotify, Muve, Slacker, Rhapsody, Rdio and Xbox Music, among others) will now be factored into the 50-position rankings, along with existing radio airplay data monitored by Nielsen BDS. The makeovers will enable these charts to match the methodology applied to Billboard’s signature all-genre songs ranking, the Billboard Hot 100.
On the surface, this seems like a good idea. After all, the country singles chart included both sales and airplay data for decades, until switching to airplay-only in 1989. Declining availability of retail singles made this change necessary.
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One of the things that frustrates me the most about today’s mainstream country music is the way so many of the songs just seem to be screaming ‘Like me! Like me! Like me!’ 
