What you missed at the CMA Awards

By taking home a trio of Country Music Awards in 2015, Chris Stapleton announced his arrival at the next country music star.

On Chris Stapleton, who won best new artist, album of the year for Traveller and male vocalist of the year, he said “It’s so fun watching the birth on an artist happen like that”. They lost music video of the year to Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country Song” and musical event of the year to Church and Urban.

The 2015 Country Music Awards is always one of the biggest parties of the year.

“I told them backstage, ‘If you guys keep winning awards, we might have to flip-flop this daggum tour, ‘” Bryan said. Following these victories, Smith’s song “Stay” experienced an increase in download sales, with the song being downloaded 81,000 times that week, an increase of 38,000 from the week before.

The nominees and winners of the CMA Awards were determined by more than 7,400 industry professional members of CMA.

But Shelton, after five straight wins, saw newcomer Chris Stapleton snatch away the male vocalist of the year award. The album for which Lambert won was her fifth, while Shelton’s was his eighth and Church’s was his third.

On Garth Brooks, who was nominated with Bryan for entertainer of the year, he said “Garth rewrote the book on entertainment”. Liz Rose, who wrote the song with Lori McKenna and Hillary Lindsey, says she was thrilled Little Big Town loved the song because she didn’t think anyone would record it. (Another performance that combined pop and country: Fall Out Boy and Thomas Rhett’s.) Stapleton and Timberlake performed the former’s Tennessee Whiskey, and the latter’s Drink You Away.

Brad and Carrie’s opening monologue: No night that starts off with Shatner singing “Girl Crush” and Paisley in his underwear can go wrong.

While many didn’t know what to expect of Timberlake performing, they were more than pleasantly surprised as social media instantly blew up with users raving about the incredible, soulful and very surprising duet.

The top award at the three-hour, performance-heavy ceremony broadcast live on ABC television from the Bridgestone Arena went to Luke Bryan, who kicked off his acceptance speech on a religious note, saying “Thank you lord, thank you Jesus, thank you everyone in heaven looking out for me”.

The emotional star spoke about the death of his father before adding: “This is an unbelievable thing to me, and I’m not going to take it lightly”.