The CMT Music Awards should be a proudly wacky free-for-all. So what happened this year?
One of the real pleasures in country music over the past year or so has been watching Chris Stapleton attend awards shows with increasing indifference.
Sure, the bushy-bearded singer seemed legitimately psyched last fall when he was unexpectedly anointed at the Country Music Assn. Awards. Since then, though, every time the camera has caught his face as he’s sat through yet another back-slapping occasion — the Grammy Awards, say, or the Academy of Country Music Awards — Stapleton has looked like a man who’s begun to regret his success.
He appeared especially bored at Wednesday night’s CMT Music Awards, where he ended up in a live shot behind the show’s host, Erin Andrews, as she did a strained, unfunny bit involving Internet memes and her co-host, J.J. Watt. (Come back, LL Cool J; all is forgiven.) Andrews was working hard, but Stapleton, clearly miserable beneath his signature straw hat, wasn’t buying it.
You want a reaction from this guy? You have to earn it honestly.
Broadcast on CMT (duh) from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, this year’s production was certainly looking for reactions elsewhere. It opened with a loud, chaotic stretch of performances that somehow combined Keith Urban, Cheap Trick, Billy Ray Cyrus and Pitbull, the last of whom seemed to think that bringing along Leona Lewis gave him a reason for being at a country music show. Later, there was an equally mystifying collaboration between Cam and Fifth Harmony that made you wonder whether either had heard of the other before Wednesday evening.
Try as it might, though, most of this unremarkable little show just made me feel like Stapleton.
The CMTs have fared better in the past. Because the event is put on by a ratings-hungry cable network — as opposed to an inherently protective trade group such as the CMA or the ACM — it’s been free historically to follow wacky impulses without worrying how they represent the institution of country music. I remember an awesome three-way pileup a few years ago that had ZZ Top, Luke Bryan and Jason Derulo.
“La Grange” with added saxophone sleaze? Ooh, talk dirty to me.
Yet the 2016 edition — which, oh yeah, also handed out meaningless prizes to Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw and Blake Shelton — failed to deliver on the promise of its left-field mashups. Cheap Trick and Cyrus, in particular, lacked any kind of chemistry as they bulldozed hastily through “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Surrender,” two dad-rock classics that should’ve summoned at least a spark.
Strangely, Wednesday’s highlights were the more tasteful (and therefore less characteristically CMT-ish) moments: Elle King plucking her banjo as she joined Dierks Bentley for “Different for Girls”; Underwood making musical, not merely visual, use of a gospel choir in “Church Bells”; Shelton getting just the right amount of cheek into “Doing It to Country Songs,” which featured the Oak Ridge Boys and eventually segued into the group’s early-’80s hit “Elvira.”
Stapleton was fine, too, in a typically soulful “Parachute” — though he may have been relishing the opportunity only to get out of his seat for 3 1/2 minutes.
The show closed with another would-be wig-flipper: Little Big Town and Pharrell Williams doing “One Dance,” a tune from the group’s surprise collaborative album that’s due out Friday. But here, the scratchy light-funk track didn’t sound like anybody’s idea of a revolution, which in a way, was exactly what was good about it.
The CMTs needed more fire, but at least this had a steady flame.
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Twitter: @mikaelwood
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