Miley Cyrus, Kellie Pickler, Trace Adkins, Taylor Swift Transform CMT Music Awards into Pop Culture Phenomenon

At a time when so many award shows have become so dull and distended, it is great to watch as CMT knocks the CMT Music Awards event out of the park year after year. I think they set the bar so impossibly high Monday night that I can't imagine how they are going to top it in 2009. But I am confident they will. As I sat in the audience watching the taped segment that opened the 2008 CMT Music Awards, featuring amusing cameos by Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (all anxious to acquire last minute tickets to the sold-out event), along with Donald Trump, Ryan Seacrest and others, I began to wonder, “Has country music been permeated by politics and popular culture, or are popular culture and politics trying to permeate country music?”

Based on the surging popularity of the genre among all demographics – especially young people – I decided to go with the latter. A quick look around the Curb Event Center (the arena at Nashville's Belmont University that serves as the home of this annual CMT event) reinforced my conclusion. This was my fourth year attending the Awards, and I had never seen so many kids, teens and twenty-somethings in the audience. Of course, the talent on hand had something to do with the youth-quake. Disney Channel sensation Miley Cyrus, who grew up near Nashville and is arguably one of the biggest stars in American popular culture today, was co-hosting the event with her dad, Billy Ray. Taylor Swift, who at 18 has emerged as one of the genre's hottest artists, was a multiple nominee and a performer. And, as always, there were past American Idol contestants in abundant attendance (Bucky Covington, Diana DeGarmo, Phil Stacey), plus one winner (Carrie Underwood) and one judge (Paula Abdul).

The kids and teens seated all around me didn't simply scream and applaud when a young person was honored, as when Idol alumna Kellie Pickler (who was out of town) received three of CMT's coveted belt buckle shaped awards (Breakthrough Video of the Year, Performance of the Year and Tearjerker Video of the Year, all for I Wonder) and Swift two (Female Video of the Year and Video of the Year, both for Our Song). They also went wild for such “old folks” as Male Video of the Year winner Trace Adkins, Group Video of the Year winners Rascal Flatts and most of the stars at the event, including Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Brad Paisley, Hank Williams Jr., Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, to name but a few of the A-listers who performed in unprecedented numbers during the show. (At the pre-Awards party for visiting media and advertising executives the night before, MTV Networks Music/Logo/Film Group President Van Toffler told me that this year's show would be the biggest and best CMT Music Awards presentation ever. I politely accepted his remarks -- after all, what was the guy going to say, that I wouldn't be as impressed as I have been in recent years? But Toffler was right. The country star power Monday night far eclipsed anything I have seen at any previous CMT event.)

Clearly, country music and CMT are doing something right.

Another sign that this was a bigger event than usual, and that country music is way too hot to ignore: People magazine co-sponsored the Awards after-party at the downtown Nashville nightspot City Hall. In the recent past, People was represented at these Awards by a lone freelance reporter who did not specialize in country music.

Because winners of the CMT Music Awards are totally chosen by fan voting, and because kids tend to linger online longer than older people and participate more readily in such things, it was easy to dismiss the multiple wins by Pickler and Swift as no-brainers. (Upon learning that I had attended the Awards and would be writing about them, a woman on my flight home from Nashville grumbled of the Video of the Year Award, “Taylor Swift over Kenny Chesney? Give me a break!”) But how would that explain the many wins for “mature” artists including Trace Adkins, Rascal Flatts, Sugarland(Duo Video of the Year), Alison Krauss and Robert Plant (Wide Open Video of the Year) and Bon Jovi and LeAnn Rimes (Collaborative Video of the Year)?

It seems the kids like it all, and age doesn't really matter. But they surely like Taylor Swift the best. When we talked on the carpet last year Swift told me that she owed her success to her friends on MySpace. When we talked again the other night she told me how grateful she is to have more than 700,000 friends on MySpace to support her and that she still goes online every day to communicate with them. Smart artists know that social networking is now the secret to success.

In a nod to young people in the genre – as in up and coming country artists – CMT this year added what it called a “side stage” adjacent to the main stage of the show. Before each commercial break, newcomers including Bucky Covington, Lady Antebellum, Chuck Wicks, James Otto and Luke Bryan were given a minute or two to perform. This was a genius move on the part of CMT. Watching these folks play in between songs by the very top artists in country music was a thrill, and I'll bet CMT is already getting requests from management of other new artists for those “side stage” slots at next year's show.

Finally, here's a shout out to CMT publicity chief Lisa Chader and her hard-working team, who always manage to ensure that members of the press have everything they need in order to cover the show, no matter how big it gets. They are the best.