Lambert leads 54th annual CMA nominations
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Country star Miranda Lambert turns her “Wildcard” into an ace, as she’s the leading nominee at the 2020 Country Music Association Awards, including her first entertainer of the year nomination in five years.
The CMAS announced Tuesday that Lambert earned seven nominations. The Grammy winner was pushed by the success of songs such as “Bluebird,” her first country airplay No. 1 in years, and by positive reviews of her smart and sassy “Wildcard" album. Lambert, who has won 13 CMAS, makes history this year, breaking the record for most nominations by a female artist with 55 overall nods.
She's followed by Luke Combs, who continues his streak of success as one of country music’s biggest streaming artists with six nominations, including his first for entertainer of the year. Combs earned his first all-genre No. 1 album last year with “What You See Is What You Get,” which had the largest streaming week ever for a country album with 74 million on-demand streams.
“It’s pretty crazy. It’s been shocking to say the least,” Combs said of his entertainer of the year nod, which comes two years after he was named new artist of the year. “You're kind of up in the big leagues."
Carrie Underwood joins Combs and Lambert in the entertainer of the year category, along with Keith Urban and Eric Church. Garth Brooks, who won last year, recently announced he no longer wanted to be nominated for entertainer of the year because it was time for others to win.
Combs' nominations include album, single and male vocalist of the year. He's nominated twice in the song of the year category for his own track, “Even Though I'm Leaving,” and for co-writing the Carly Pearce-lee Brice duet “I Hope You're Happy Now.”
“It's a dream come true for somebody that writes their own stuff,” said Combs. “Having won that award last year was just really really really special.”
The CMA Awards will be held Nov. 11 in Nashville.
Notable snubs in the nominations include country icon Tanya Tucker, who earned her first two Grammy Awards this year for her comeback album “While I’m Livin’.”
The Chicks, who returned with their first new album in 14 years, also weren't nominated, probably due to a longstanding rift between some country fans and the outspoken female group.
Sam Hunt, who put out a longawaited album this year, was also missing from the list.
Dan + Shay's Dan Smyers has six nominations, including four he shares with bandmate Shay Mooney and three with pop star Justin Bieber for their crossover hit “10,000 Hours.” Smyers earned individual nominations for his work as a producer on the song. These are the first CMA nominations for Bieber, who won a CMT Music Award in 2011 for “That Should Be Me” with Rascal Flatts.
Other top nominees include Maren Morris, who scored five nominations including song and single of the year for her love song, “The Bones." Her track became the longest-running No. 1 on Billboard's Hot country songs chart by a solo female artist since Taylor Swift's “We Are Never Getting Back Together.”
An Australian man returned home to discover that his kitchen ceiling had collapsed under the weight of two large pythons apparently fighting over a mate.
David Tait entered his home in Laceys Creek in Queensland state on Monday and found a large chunk of his ceiling lying on his kitchen table.
"I knew we hadn’t had rain, so I looked around to find what had caused it,” Tait told Nine Network television on Tuesday.
He soon found two culprits — nonvenomous carpet pythons, one 9 feet, 2 inches long and the other 8 feet, 2 inches long — that had slithered into a bedroom and living room, respectively. The snakes’ combined weight was estimated at 100 pounds.
Snake catcher Steven Brown was called to remove the two snakes.
“I would assume that it was two males fighting over a female that was nearby in the roof,” Brown said. He suspected that the female could still be above the ceiling or nearby.
The males were returned to the wild.
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