This year’s CMA Awards nominees…

Miranda Lambert
Female Vocalist Of The Year
Album Of The Year (The Weight Of These Wings)
Single Of The Year (“Tin Man”)
Song Of The Year (“Tin Man”)
Video Of The Year (“Vice”)

  Miranda Lambert shares where the title The Weight Of These Wings came from. (:47)
“The Weight of These Wings was a line my dad said to me…He’s a songwriter, he’s not written a song in probably 9 years now…but he mentioned the line to me one time at a show and it just stuck with me. It just felt really big and someways heavy and someways light, you know, it sort of makes you think about a lot of things just that one sentence. And so, we tried to write the song a few times and nothing really came of it and it just sort of going through this record process felt like it would tie everything together, being 24 songs I needed a title that would sort of round out the edges I guess, and The Weight Of These Wings felt right.”

  Miranda Lambert shares a little bit of the inspiration behind her song “Tin Man.” (:34)
“Whatever influenced you the most, at whatever time in your life, somewhere or another comes out in your art. The Tin Man. I guess, going through a lot of times where I felt empty, I understood a whole new meaning, I mean, how many times have we seen The Wizard Of Oz, but it’s something that world shares…everyone knows what the Tin Man represents–cold, and empty, and loneliness, and heartless…and it just opened my eyes to it even more going through pain myself, you know, sort of an epiphany”

  Miranda Lambert talks about her song “Vice” (:32)
“I just hope that everybody that hears it can kinda feel like they’re not on an island. That we all have things in our life that aren’t necessary pleasant to talk about, but this song is just honest as you can get about emotions, and letting raw emotions live where they live until you move on to a happier place.  It’s kinda the cycle of life, we can’t all be sunshine and roses everyday and sometimes when we’re not we find things that make us feel better at the moment and that’s what a vice is.”

Maren Morris
Female Vocalist Of The Year
Musical Event Of The Year (“Craving You” with Thomas Rhett)
Video Of The Year (“Craving You” with Thomas Rhett)

  Maren Morris talks about Thomas Rhett and their number-one song “Craving You.” (:37)
“Thomas and I are both…he’s be doing this in this capacity a lot longer than me, but I’ve sort of looked at him from afar as a fan of his music, and his…sort of…his boundary pushing, genre wise. I’ve always wanted to work with him, so when he reached out to me about this song, ‘Craving You,’ it wasn’t a duet, or even a feature with a woman on it, just a guy song. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to put a female voice because it’s just…you know, makes sense from a man’s point of view. But I loved that he wanted to add that in there. I was like ‘Yes! This is awesome, I’ve always wanted to work with you’.”

  Maren Morris talks about finding a new creative outlet in making music videos. (:28)
“It’s an outlet for my…another creative side I never knew I had, because you don’t always get the opportunity to make a music video. But, I feel like I know a little bit more now about what goes into it, and storyboarding, and writing treatments, and all that stuff, different angles, directing. It makes a little bit more sense to me now, so it makes thinking about future music videos a lot more fun because I know what sort of goes on behind the scenes now.”

Old Dominion
Vocal Group Of The Year
New Artist Of The Year

  The guys in Old Dominion talk about the the lyric “Chase after the dream, don’t chase after the money”  from their hit song “No Such Thing As A Broken Heart.” (:35)
Trevor: “Yeah, I mean amazingly they both worked out. (laugh)”
Matthew: (laugh)
Brad: (laugh) “Amazing uproarious laughter after the…”
Matthew: “It was kind of maniacal”
Brad: “yeah”
Matthew: (maniacal laugh)
Trevor: (maniacal laugh)
Matthew: “we got the dream and the money!”
Trevor: “No, I think if you’re chasing the end result for anything, anytime, you’re chasing the wrong thing. Especially for what we do for a living with music, I mean it’s very rare that everything works out that way, if you’re not doing it because you love it, you’re just running down the wrong path. You have to really be doing something that you love to do, and WOULD do for free anyway.”

  Matthew from Old Dominion talks about going from country music star to dad when back at home. (:41)
“It is a bit of a double life that we lead. We call it re-entry, when we come back into home it’s like re-entering the atmosphere and you come back in and you are no longer the rockstar you’re just dad. Which is a very nice thing to come home to. Honestly, it’s very humbling to come in and have to fix breakfast and get everybody’s lunch packed and get them out the door and take them to school. It’s a very nice thing and it’s a great way to just remember that you are a real person and not everybody cares that you have a guitar and sing songs. It’s really the best thing you could ever do is be a dad.”

Kenny Chesney
Musical Event Of The Year (“Setting the World On Fire” with P!nk)

  Kenny Chesney talks about having P!nk on the song “Setting The World On Fire.” (:39)
“After I recorded ‘Setting The World On Fire,’ and after I lived with it for a little while, I realize I needed a woman’s voice to be in the song with me, and Pink’s voice holds so many feelings. When I hear her sing, I hear joy, I hear want, a bit of toughness, and a little bit of hurt. To me that’s the mark of a great singer, and a great vocalist…someone that can make you feel all those things at once, and I’ve always really respected her and loved her singing, and I guess it’s because when I hear Pink sing, I truly believe what she’s saying to me.”

Tim McGraw & Faith Hill
Musical Event Of The Year (“Speak To A Girl”)

  Tim McGraw & Faith Hill had no doubt that their new song “Speak To A Girl” would be a duet, and a powerful song. (:36)
Tim: “We were going to do it together”
Faith: “Yeah, we were going to do it together. There was no question about it. As my husband, as the father of our daughters, it was just powerful. To me it was even broader and it became something more than just…I don’t want to say just a song, because songs…music is life changing. We’ve all had experiences, we’ve all had those moments…those songs that can place us in a certain time and a certain period of our life and we remember that moment forever. So, it’s a powerful instrument.”

Luke Combs
New Artist Of The Year

  Luke Combs tries to explain where his singing ability came from. (:38)
“I don’t know, I would compare it to being tall, I guess. It’s just kind of like, I started singing as soon as I could talk, is what my parents always told me. I was always getting in trouble for humming in class, and singing and stuff. “I don’t know, I would compare it to being tall, I guess. It’s just kind of like, I started singing as soon as I could talk, is what my parents always told me. I remember my Aunts would always make me sing when I was real little, 5 or 6. I don’t know, I just didn’t even really know I was any good at it until probably I was in the 9th grade. I just knew I liked it, and people liked to hear me sing, and that was it. I wasn’t like ‘man, am I any good at this,’ or anything, it was just something that I was comfortable doing, and that really made me happy, so that was how the singing came into the picture.”