Roots, Toots n' Hoots Blog

Surprise surprise - the ACM nominations

Jeffrey Remz  |  February 3, 2015

It should have come as no surprise just how well Miranda Lambert was going to do when it came to garnering Academy of Country Music nominations. The singer ended up with eight nominations in the seven categories for which she was eligible.

Dierks Bentley captured seven nominations, Florida Georgia Line five, and Eric Church, Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan five apiece.

For those who are the betting kind, I'd say about the surest bet is Florida Georgia Line for Best Vocal Duo. If anyone else wins, it will be a huge shock. First off, Brothers Osborne and Maddie & Tae don't even have albums out. The latter, of course, has gotten a lot of attention due to their anti-bro country song (interesting that they're up against FGL then) "Girl in a Country Song." Brothers Osborne has released a five-song EP and a single, "Rum," that only reached 34 on Billboard. They're not exactly burning up the charts.

At least Dan + Shay and The Swon Brothers have released albums, but only the former has gained much radio play. This is one of those categories where you wonder what the voters were thinking in making the nominations in the first place. It's almost as if they didn't have enough acts to even compete for five slots.

One surprise was Garth Brooks. He received but one nomination - for Entertainer of the Year - after releasing "Man Against Machine" last fall and launching a world tour, ending his retirement. It seems a bit odd that someone who is good enough to be nominated for that can't get a nomination for anything else, not even Male Vocalist.

Another surprise was that Brad Paisley only was nominated for one award - Male Vocalist of the Year. The same could be said for Keith Urban, whose "Cop Car" landed in the Video of the Year category.

And Taylor Swift didn't even get nominated for "1989." (just kidding!)

These awards shows are not the final arbiter of what constitutes quality music needless to say. Whoever wins award x or y will not settle who indeed is the best female singer or what the album of the year should be.

So while some of these nominations are head scratchers, maybe we should just let the artists be thankful they were nominated period and leave it at that.