Taylor Swift took the most-coveted entertainer of the year award for the second time Wednesday and newcomers The Band Perry reaped a hat trick of honors at the 45th Country Music Awards last week.
“I’m so happy right now ... You’ve made my year. Thank you so much,” said the 21-year-old singer-songwriter with the supermodel looks at the climax of a three-hour gala in country music’s capital city of Nashville, Tennessee.
Just minutes earlier, Swift — whose Speak Now has been one of the year’s top country albums — looked bewildered when she was passed up for female singer of the year and three other categories for which she had been nominated.
Swift last won entertainer of the year — the top honor at the most prestigious of country music’s many award evenings — in 2009, the youngest artist ever to do so.
Taking the evening by storm was Tennessee sibling trio The Band Perry, who first won single of the year for their melancholic hit If I Die Young, then song of the year, and then best new artist.
Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles, who perform as Sugarland, won best vocal duo three months after tragedy struck their latest concert tour when an Indiana stage on which they were about to perform collapsed, killing seven people.
Jason Aldean won album of the year for My Kind of Party. Nashville’s Lady Antebellum took best vocal group. Blake Shelton picked up best male vocalist honors and Miranda Lambert won for best female vocalist.
Going home empty-handed was Brad Paisley, last year’s entertainer of the year, who had to make do with the memory of co-hosting the evening with American Idol alumnus and three-time best female vocalist Carrie Underwood.
Musical performances included Swift in a bright pink sweater on a living room sofa playing a solo acoustic version of Ours, and soul legend Lionel Ritchie, who belted out three numbers from his upcoming album of country duets.
Mercifully not singing was Miss Piggy, who made a brief appearance alongside Paisley and Underwood in support of The Muppets, due for release later this month.
At another celebratory event for the music industry, Prince Charles and record industry royalty paid tribute to pianist, bandleader and television presenter Jools Holland last week when he was awarded the 20th Music Industry Trusts Award.
In a video message played at a swanky dinner in central London, Charles spoke of Holland’s “irresistible music” and “wonderful humanity.”
Holland rose to prominence in the 1970s as a founding member of the band Squeeze, famous for hits like Cool For Cats and Pulling Mussels (From the Shell).
The annual award is designed to honor a leading figure in the music business and raise money for its two chosen charities — music therapy organization Nordoff Robbins and The BRIT School for Performing Arts & Technology.
Nordoff Robbins uses music to help people with a range of clinical conditions and The BRIT School is Britain’s only free performing arts school and has produced major recording stars including Amy Winehouse and Adele. “Thirty years of television, 25 of big band and probably 40 years since first playing the pubs ... that’s why I’m delighted to receive this, with all of those in mind,” Holland said.
On the bleaker side of music news, Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted of Michael Jackson’s manslaughter, admitted in comments broadcast Thursday that he made mistakes on the day of the pop icon’s death but denied criminal culpability.
The doctor’s previously unheard comments were made to British journalist Steve Hewlett and aired on Channel 4 immediately before the showing of a controversial documentary charting the singer’s demise. Jackson’s estate is currently working to prevent the program from being aired in the US on the MSNBC network next week.
In related news, Jackson’s death bed will go under the hammer along with other personal items from the LA mansion where he died, the auctioneer behind the sale said Thursday.
Auction house chief Darren Julien said he preferred not to highlight the morbid aspect of the sale, which involves the contents of the mansion in the plush Holmby Hills area of LA where Jackson died on June 25, 2009.
“It includes all the items that surrounded him and his family in the last part of his life,” he said, adding: “It’s the first time that items like this, fine decorative art, have been sold that’s associated with him.”
As well as the bed — crime scene photos of which were shown during Murray’s six-week trial, complete with medical paraphernalia — the sale will also include a mirror from Jackson’s private bathroom.
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