Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
By popular demand
Perhaps you think the market is already flooded with award shows for people who are good at what they do, but at the end of the day, they're not exactly saving lives or curing world hunger. And you’d be right. The ACAs is a bit of an exception, however, because this is the only country music awards show that allows the fans to decide. It’s a bit like a star-studded American Idol for country music. Award shows where the consumers/fans decide are a bit more fun, because that typically means we have a dog in the race and someone to root for.
Unique categories
And by unique categories, we don’t mean “Best person to pick brown M&Ms out of the bowl for country music’s biggest diva.” You have to admit, some of the award categories can get a little far-fetched at times. While there is a lot of crossover between the ACA and CMA categories, ACA kicked it up a notch and threw in “Touring Artist of the Year.” There is probably more than one country music artist who works their tail off on tour and thinks recognition of this kind is long overdue.
A break from the Taylor Swift Show
Sometimes when you tune into a country music awards show it can start to feel like this: blah, blah, blah Taylor Swift, blah, blah, blah Carrie Underwood, blah, blah, blah Taylor Swift. After a bit you start to think, Is this a country music awards show or did I tune into the Taylor Swift Show? For example, Kipp Moore’s "Somethin’ 'Bout a Truck" was and still is wildly popular, even for folks with only a nodding acquaintance with country music. And yet, he was mysteriously absent from the CMA nominee roster. The ACAs are recognizing a few artists that country music fans love, but who didn’t make the CMA cut.
Drama-free
There is one thing notably absent from the ACAs: drama. You decide whether or not that’s a good thing. One could argue that the ACAs is still a baby award show and hasn’t found its legs in the drama department. But where we can usually count on other award shows to bring us misbehaved celebrities, the ACAs to date have been pretty tame. Oh, sure, Trace Adkins tried to generate a little controversy by wearing a Confederate flag earpiece recently, but that was before the show. We’ll have to tune in this year to see if the ACAs will catch up to its peers in the scandal department.
