2006 CMT Music Award Winners

It’s all over but the Tuesday morning quarterbacking and good natured ribbing by the fans of the stars that didn’t take home a belt buckle. The 2006 CMT Music Awards were held on April 10th and looked to be a good time for everyone.

Jeff Foxworthy hosted the event and opened the show with a parady of Trace Adkins Honkytonk Badonadonk with Lisa Rinna of Soap Talk and Dancing with Stars, then the big man himself came out and sang the song. If you can get away from the scantily clad dancers, the song isn’t really that bad in my opinion.

Carrie Underwood was the big winner of the night with two buckles for her video Jesus Take the Wheel, she won in Female Video of the Year and Breakthru Video of the Year categories. For her first awards show, she was composed if not a bit surprised that she beat out Faith Hill, Sara Evans and Miranda Lambert in the Female Video group. She said in her acceptance speech that she “idolized” the other ladies in the group.

Rascal Flatts received one of the biggest laughs of the night when they picked up their buckle for Group/Duo Video of the Year for the song Skin (Sarabeth). They were happy Carrie’s song wasn’t nominated in their category. There has been some discussion about the comment and some Carrie Underwood fans not knowing the relationship between Rascal Flatts and Carrie thought there might have been some animosity between the artists, nothing could be further from the truth, the guys have a ton of respect for Carrie, they just figured that if her video had been in their category, it would have won.

Keith Urban took home the big award of the night for his video Better Life and closed the show with the song. He was accompanied during his performance by a choir made up of Hurricane Katrina survivors.

Hank Williams Jr. took home the Johnny Cash Visionary Award that was presented to him by Gretchen Wilson and Kid Rock. He read off several definitions of visionary that he found and told the audience that he didn’t fit any of them with a big Bocephus grin on his face. He mentioned his daughters that were in a car accident recently and the sole survivor of the Sago mine accident that he had visited at both the hospital and at a birthday party the day before. He also mentioned Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and his father, Hank Williams as people that had “molded” country music and the he himself was just a “carpenter” in a long line of carpenters coming up thru the ranks.

Kenny Chesney won the award for Male Video of the Year and in his speech stated that he had a personal connection to the song and video Who’d You’d Be Today because of losing people before their time. This was his way of remembering them.

Faith Hill accepted the Video Director of the Year for Sophie Muller, who was in England editing Faith’s new video Stealing Kisses. Sophie won for Like We Never Loved At All, Faith’s song with husband Tim McGraw. (There has been no word as to why Tim wasn’t at the awards as was previously announced.)

Billy Currington won the buckle for Hottest Video of the Year for his song Must be Doin’ Somethin’ Right and thanked his fans, the record label and his director for helping him along the way. Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton won the buckle for Inspirational Video of the Year for When I Get Where I’m Going but neither was present to pick up the award.

The short tribute to Buck Owens was done by Dwight Yoakum and I couldn’t think of anyone better to deliver the speech. Dwight obviously has a ton of respect for Buck and it was clear in the things he had to say. Buck will be sorely missed in the country music genre for years to come, thank goodness we have his music to remember him.

Stop by the forum and let us know what you think.