Texas country music firebrand Miranda Lambert won big at the 44th Country Music Assn. Awards ceremony on Wednesday in Nashville, taking home trophies for best album, top female vocalist and top video in connection with her album “Revolution.” Brad Paisley took the night’s top award as entertainer of the year, and Lady Antebellum’s chart-topping hit “Need You Now” was named the year’s best single.
The entertainer award to Paisley recognizes a combination of live performance, recorded music and ambassadorship for country music. “My hero is Little Jimmy Dickens,” Paisley said, mimicking the broken voice of the Grand Ole Opry veteran, “and he has a saying: ‘If you see a turtle on a fencepost, it had help getting up there.’ I feel like a turtle on a fencepost at this point.”
Lambert, whose awards came on the day she turned 27, said, “ ‘Revolution’ has truly caused a revolution in my life this year. … It’s my baby, it’s what I live for. Thank you so much for loving it, too.” “The House That Built Me,” a Tom Douglas-Allen Shamblin composition that Lambert sang on the album, was named song and video of the year.