2014 CMT Music Awards Predictions

This is a fan-voted award show where nominees were voted for at CMT.com, so the outcome can be unpredictable or predictably predictable! I think it’s an exciting change to the other award shows that tend to all be the same and with only a handful of people voting. Here is a chance for the fans to share their opinions. However, it’s CMT, a country music video channel, so selections should be based on the song and video itself, and I tried to keep that in mind for my voting. This year there a lot of collaborations nominated, and a few artists nominated more than once for different videos.

Immediately I said I know my personal votes AND predictions would probably be way off so it might be comical to post my picks to see just how clueless I am! My personal votes are in bold and my predictions are in italics. As you can see, there is only one match between my pick and my prediction and that is for Breakthrough Video of the year. This should be interesting.

After the award show on Wednesday June 4^th I will update this list, notating who actually won to compare! You can leave comments at the bottom if you’d like.

Video of the Year:
Blake Shelton (with Pistol Annies and Friends) “Boys ‘Round Here”
****Carrie Underwood for “See You Again”****
Eric Church “Give Me Back My Home Town”
Florida Georgia Line (with Luke Bryan) “This Is How We Roll”
Hunter Hayes “I Want Crazy”
Kasey Musgraves “Follow Your Arrow”
Keith Urban (with Miranda Lambert) “We Were Us”
Luke Bryan “That’s My Kinda Night”
Miranda Lambert “Automatic” I am a big fan of Miranda and I think this is a great song, but also the video is such a great companion piece. It has visual references to what the song is about and specific things the lyrics address. A lot of care seems to have gone into the attic scenes because there is a lot of beautiful detail to foreground and background. It makes me wonder if that’s really Miranda’s attic.
Taylor Swift “Red”
Thomas Rhett “It Goes Like This”
Tim McGraw (with Taylor Swift and Keith Urban) “Highway Don’t Care”

Male Video of the Year:
****Blake Shelton “Doin’ What She Likes”**** I’m also a big Blake fan, but the video is really funny! A lot of thought went into the video because at first you think it’s following the lyric exact, but there’s a funny plot twist instead. This isn’t a performance video like “Night Train”.
Eric Church “Give Me Back My Hometown”
Hunter Hayes “I Want Crazy”
Jason Aldean “Night Train”
Luke Bryan “Crash My Party”
Randy Houser “Runnin’ Outta Moonlight”

Female Video of the Year:
Carrie Underwood “See You Again”
Cassadee Pope “Wasting All These Tears”
Kacey Musgraves “Follow Your Arrow”
****Miranda Lambert “Automatic”****
Sheryl Crow “Easy”
Taylor Swift “Red”

Group Video of the Year:
Eli Young Band “Drunk Last Night”
Lady Antebellum “Compass”
Little Big Town “Your Side of the Bed” LBT is one of my favorite bands and they deserve all the fame and recognition they can get. Not only is this a very powerful song written about a topic not usually covered, the video goes very well with it. It’s simple but makes an impact particularly because of Karen and Jimi being married. This is a great live song too.
Rascal Flatts “Rewind”
****The Band Perry “Done”****
Zac Brown Band “Sweet Annie”

Duo Video of the Year:
Dan + Shay “19 You + Me” FGL are nominated twice and only two other fairly new acts are up against them. There aren’t too many duos to pick from here but I think this video deserves to win because it plays up the line “California Beautiful”.
****Florida Georgia Line “Round Here”****
Florida Georgia Line “Stay”
Thompson Square “Everything I Shouldn’t Be Thinking About”

Breakthrough Video of the Year:
Brett Eldredge “Beat of the Music” I’m probably way off here but this guy is pretty active (and funny) on Twitter so maybe that will have boasted his votes, plus the song is still being played quite a bit.
****Cassadee Pope “Wasting All These Tears”****
Cole Swindell “Chillin’ It”
David Nail “Whatever She’s Got”
Thomas Rhett “It Goes Like This”
Tyler Farr “Redneck Crazy”

Collaborative Video of the Year:
Blake Shelton (with Pistol Annies and Friends) “Boys ‘Round Here”
****Florida Georgia Line (with Luke Bryan) “This Is How We Roll”****
Florida Georgia Line (with Nelly) “Cruise Remix”
Hunter Hayes (with Jason Mraz) “Everybody’s Got Somebody But Me”
Keith Urban (with Miranda Lambert) “We Were Us” Another category that FGL are nominated twice for and I’m not sure I agree, but I have a strong feeling one of their songs will win. I really like “We Were Us” because it’s a little different for Miranda, but a little less “vanilla” for Keith.
Tim McGraw (with Taylor Swift and Keith Urban) “Highway Don’t Care”

CMT Performance of the Year:
Dierks Bentley and OneRepublic “Counting Stars”(From CMT Crossroads)
Jake Owen “Days of Gold” (From CMT Hot 20 Countdown)
Lady Antebellum and Stevie Nicks “Rhiannon” (From CMT Crossroads) It’s Stevie Nicks with Lady A! Nuff said…
****Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie “Oh No/All Night Long” (From 2013 CMT Artists of the Year)****
The Band Perry and Fall Out Boy “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up)” (From CMT Crossroads)
Willie Nelson and Neil  Young “Long May You Run” (From CMT Crossroads)

Actual winners have asterisks next to their names for comparison. Turns out two of my votes actually won, Blake and Miranda! I was a little disappointed with the winners in the other categories.

Overall I think it was a fun night with some great performances. My favorite was Little Big Town debuting their new single “Day Drinking” and brought a lot of paint with them! I also enjoyed seeing ZZ Top for the opening number, but then it took a turn for the worse and went too rap for my taste.

I thought Miranda and Carrie’s performance of “Somethin Bad” was better this time around compared to the Billboard Awards. On record the track is heavy on the rock and doesn’t sound as messy. Judging by all the tweets over the last few days it sounds like the CMA Fest was one of the best ever, so I plan on going next year for coverage!