Carrie Underwood has another reason to rejoice – she has extended her record as the most decorated artist in the history of the CMT Music Awards, thanks to her song Hallelujah.
The music video for the singer’s hit, a collaboration with John Legend, was named video of the year at the awards show, which aired from Nashville, Tennessee.
Underwood, who now has 23 CMT Awards, thanked her die-hard fans while accepting the honour: “You’re the reason we’re all here doing what we do, doing what we love (and) making music videos.”
She also thanked Legend, particularly for sending her the song, which appeared on her album My Gift.
“Congratulations on what I think is your first CMT Award. Whoa!” she exclaimed.
Though Underwood owned part of the night – she also performed with rock band NEEDTOBREATHE — other female stars, some outside of country music, took over the awards show honouring the year’s best country music videos.
Grammy-winning R&B star H.E.R. and Chris Stapleton had the night’s best performance. They joined forces for a performance of Hold On.
Gladys Knight won over audience members — not wearing masks — during a performance of Friendship Train with Mickey Guyton.
Part of the show felt dedicated to black female voices thanks to the top notch performances by Knight, H.E.R. and Guyton, who was nominated for two awards and presented the CMT Equal Play Award to Linda Martell, one of the pioneering black acts in country music and the first black woman to perform solo at the Grand Ole Opry.
Lady A kicked off the show with Carly Pearce and Lindsay Ell, Ingrid Andress sang with pop singer-songwriter JP Saxe, while Miranda Lambert performed with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall.
Hosts Kane Brown and Kelsea Ballerini also performed onstage and won awards.
Brown won male video of the year for Worship You and collaborative video of the year for Famous Friends with Chris Young.
CMT performance of the year went to Ballerini and Halsey’s The Other Girl from the 2020 CMT Music Awards.
Gabby Barrett, who was originally supposed to perform at the show but backed out, won female video of the year and the best family feature award went to Taylor Swift’s The Best Day (Taylor’s Version), which was re-released this year and featured home movies starring the pop star, her brother and parents.
Little Big Town’s Wine, Beer, Whiskey won the night’s first award – duo/group video of the year.
