Wrapping up the CMAs

At last, the long drought that's been devastating Tennessee has come to an end! But more on Kellie Pickler later…

At last year's CMA Awards, when the announcement of a Carrie Underwood win was accompanied by Faith Hill mouthing the exclamation "Whaaaat?" in mock disgust (or real disgust, if you continue to disbelieve her), it was the pantomime heard 'round the world. This year's telecast of "country music's biggest night" didn't produce any such water cooler or YouTube moment. Keeping in touch with the outside world from a spot inside the show's press room in Nashville, I got the feeling there wasn't much consensus about which performances were mesmerizing or mediocre. Watching the show on monitors between quickie press conferences by the stars, I received a stream of  e-mail messages from friends viewing at home, many of them offering contradictory assessments. After the Eagles (making their first awards-show appearance ever) played their new single, "How Long," a pal mailed: "I was never a fan, but they have out-countried the rest of the country acts. A melody! Harmonies! Roll over Hank and tell... Rascal Flatts?!... the news." But at nearly the same moment, a colleague sitting next to me got a message from his a weary wife: "I'm sorry, but any group that has a collective age of about 700 should not be doing a song that repeats the line 'Rock yourself to sleep.'"

Then there was the odd coupling of Rascal Flatts and Jamie Foxx (pictured). One acquaintance said some sharp notes Gary LeVox hit early in the tune sent her rushing to turn down the TV. Another friend acknowledged the imperfections in LeVox's performance but expressed newfound respect for his unexpected ability to keep up with Foxx as their duet on Flatts' "She Goes All the Way" veered toward R&B. The sight of tears copiously rolling down Kellie Pickler's cheeks as she wrapped up "I Wonder," her ballad about being abandoned by her mother, also produced polarized responses. "If I have to see her cry at the end of that song one more time, I'm going to snap," wrote one Nashville music-bizzer. But a manager friend with Music Row ties, whom I normally think of as cynical about these things, wrote specifically to say: "I love that little Kellie Pickler!"

In the category of Best Acceptance Speech, we have a tie: between Taylor Swift, who won the Horizon Award for most promising new artist, and one-time major label artist turned tunesmith Jamey Johnson, who was accepting song of the year honors for co-writing George Strait's fantastically funny and bitter divorce anthem, "Give It Away." Grumbled Johnson, dryly, "I want to thank my ex-wife, Ann..." A wave of laughter rolled in, before he added, "...for being such a good mother to our kid. She deserves half of this." (Even his co-writers later admitted they weren't sure whether Johnson was employing some expert comic timing there, or whether the wave of laughs had afforded him time to think of a good save at the last second.) On the more innocent end of the acceptance scale, Swift — 17, and still officially home schooled — announced from the dais: "This is definitely the highlight of my senior year." Don't hate her because she's beautiful and has achieved her wildest dreams at an age when your wildest dream was 80-to-90 percent pimple containment.

Actually, let's make that a three-way tie for Best Acceptance Speech, because Brad Paisley — an utterly deserving choice for the male vocalist trophy — had one of the quicker manic-depressive turn-on-a-dime speeches I've ever seen. "I'd like to thank my wife, because she's right over there," he said, with perfect comic delivery (and indeed, Kimberly Williams-Paisley had just wrapped up her segment as one of the telecast's fleeting co-hosts, with lines like "I first met Kellie Pickler on the 'Check Him for Ticks and You're Dead' Tour") — seconds before he got teary-eyed thanking his then-reluctant dad for carting him around to gigs when he was a barely-teenage whiz kid in West Virginia. (This isn't my idea — I have to credit USA Today's Brian Mansfield, working across the aisle in the press room — but Paisley and Williams-Paisley would make great co-hosts, in perpetuity, for this show... as long as that wouldn't conflict with him getting the Entertainer of the Year award someday.)

During the backstage celebrity press briefings, it was puffballs and huzzahs all the way. Only twice did anyone ask anything remotely touching on controversy. A reporter asked the two members of Sugarland to address perpetual rumors that they will break up for the sake of Jennifer Nettles going on to a solo career (the group already shed one member, in 2006). Nettles pooh-poohed such talk. "Half of 'em want to break us up," she said, "and the other half still (mistakenly) think we're married." Tracy Lawrence and Kenny Chesney came back to the press room to further celebrate their shared Vocal Event of the Year win for a Lawrence single that had Chesney and Tim McGraw doing cameos — an independently released song that Chesney's major label tried to get radio stations to stop playing, claiming that Lawrence, whose star has been on the wane, hadn't been granted rights to release a single that would compete with Chesney's own. Chesney answered that he just hadn't been aware of his label's attempt to suppress the tune at the time, and that was that. Lawrence looked like he wanted to say more about the matter, but went back to having some genuinely affecting I love you, man moments with his longtime pal Kenny.

As for interlopers from outside the mainstream country world, I'd love to report back on what the Eagles said to the media before or after the show — but as Don Henley told the Tennessean newspaper, "We don't do red carpets." Anyway, Jamie Foxx was the biggest backstage charmer, starting with his addressing the elephant in the room. "I was texting my homeboys, saying 'I'm doing the CMAs.' 'You're doing what?'" (As in, truly, what?, not why?) This was not a random confluence of stars: He and Rascal Flatts singer Gary LeVox lived together 13 years ago... and what an amazing R-rated sitcom that would have been, if only reality-TV cameras had been rolling at the time. Singing country music "is not a stretch for me," Foxx swore... and, as  proof of this, he cited listening to Lee Greenwood while growing up in Texas. We were about to accuse him of being a lovable Kate Walsh-style carpetbagger when he won us over by adding, "You guys are too young to remember Johnny Carson. But when Mel Tillis [a new inductee into the Country Hall of Fame, briefly honored on the CMAs] guest-starred on Johnny Carson, it was amazing." Damn. We got a Jamie Foxx/Gary LeVox duet when we could've had a Jamie Foxx/Mel Tillis duet?

Let’s talk about upsets. First of all, Rascal Flatts beating the Dixie Chicks for Vocal Group of the Year, in Nashville... I mean, who saw that coming? Okay, let's be serious. Kenny Chesney seems destined to win Entertainer of the Year for as long as he keeps touring, and Carrie Underwood will probably win Female Vocalist for years to come. But everything else is up for grabs. That includes the Vocal Duo category, which for 14 of the past 15 years has belonged to Brooks & Dunn, who seemed embarrassed to be shuffling into the press room each year. This time, it went to Sugarland, eligible in the category for the first time after having lost their third member. (Do you suppose they offered that lost third wheel a huge buyout just so they could transfer from the more competitive Group category to Duo, with their improved chances at toppling the overdue-for-a-fall B&D? Me, neither, but aren't conspiracy theories fun?) A lot of the categories where the dominant male vocalists compete — including, of course, Best Male Vocalist — could go any way, with any of the usual suspects. We're seeing an odd pattern, where Chesney gets the top prize, Entertainer, every year but loses just about everything else. This year, that left Brad Paisley and George Strait to split the spoils; Paisley got Male Vocalist, Strait got Album of the Year. Either these were close votes in all these categories, or CMA voters really just are into sharing the wealth.

Oh, and Kellie? I can see why some folks are skeptical. But having spent some quality time with her, my take is that this is a girl who really is that in touch with her emotions. It's like the age-old question of whether the best country songs truly come out of the heartfelt emotions of the singer and songwriter or are calculated to produce that response in the listener. Are those mutually exclusive? Call me a sucker, but I'm sticking with the following professional credulity... Faith last year: didn't mean it. Kellie this year: meant it.