CMA Awards #40 Moments To Remember (And Forget)

It was the biggest CMA Awards live audience ever. Nashville took a few lessons from the ACM in Las Vegas, I'd guess.

Brooks & Dunn deserve to have "Vocal Duo of the Year Award" named after them, now that they have won it 14 times.

"Thank you so much! It took so many people to make this, to have this, year be as successful as it was. Thank you, country radio, thank you fans. To Arista, thank you. American Idol, thank you fans, thank you, thank you, you don't know how much this means to me. Thank you, God, thank you mom and dad." -- with the most 'thank you's' in under 60 words, Carrie Underwood

"I'm pained not being here tonight. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I look forward to coming home and seeing you soon." -- Keith Urban's acceptance letter, read by Ronnie Dunn (it was his third consecutive Male Vocalist of the Year Award, matching George Strait who won in 1996 through 1998, but the first acceptance speech from rehab)

"We've had an amazing year. Thank you to God for giving us a stage to perform on every night." -- Rascal Flatts lead singer Gary LeVox, accepting their 4th vocal group of the year award in a row

Most weirdly-surreal moment of the evening: Kix Brooks' very heavy hillbilly drawl translated into Spanish with subtitles: "Since country music is the music of the people we thought we would take it to as many people as we could tonight...," as if translating southern accepts into Spanish would make Hispanics feel like country music has something to do with them.

Meanwhile, WKIS, Miami PD Bob Barnett is quoted in this week's Radio and Records saying that the station got so much blowback from the now-minority white South Florida country audience when they attempted to do hourly bilingual station ID's that they were forced to drop them!