The only thing worse than the CMA awards are the ACM awards. For one, I think they’re the exact same thing. Secondly, it’s country music.

Country singers write and sing bad music and are praised and awarded for it. The positive reinforcement makes them produce more bad country music. Country music is a catch-22 that makes me incredibly sad. It also doesn’t help that there are seven nationally televised country music awards. Why do we encourage people to sing and write more bad music by giving them awards for bad music? It’s about as good of an idea as drinking whisky (which is made from corn, which is made by rain, which makes your baby get frisky or something like that) out of a red solo cup. Those puns were pretty awful.

Anyways, the songs that were nominated for the ostentatiously named “Song of the Year” were:

• A Woman Like You, by Lee Brice

• Even If It Breaks Your Heart – Eli Young Band

• Over You – Miranda Lambert

• Springsteen – Eric Church

• Wanted – Hunter Hayes

As these songs were all nominated for the incredibly coveted “Song of the Year” award, they must be good. Objectively, they’re pretty good; in the same way that unemployment and being on a junior varsity school team is good. Kevin here has experienced all of the above, most unfortunately the country music.

Since I had to start somewhere, I listened to the songs in the order that ACM listed off their website. How thoughtful of me.

Starting with Lee Brice’s “A Woman Like You”. The song actually isn’t bad, and there’s really nothing objectionable about the song itself…unless you start watching the music video. It starts off showing multiple scenes of Brice in outfits that appear to be coordinated by a color blind dog (for further clarification, dogs are color blind). In the first place, Brice is kind of chubby and unattractive. The director of the music video eventually realizes Brice isn’t that fun to look at, and gradually starts alternating between contrasting shots of Brice and a relatively more attractive guy who is rather less chubby and actually has hair. By the end of the video, Brice only makes half-second appearances where he tends to awkwardly sing to a window. The more attractive guy predictably acts out the lyrics of the song, showing him dejectedly picking up and setting down a bucket of sad-looking chicken, poorly playing golf on his front lawn, watching football, and playing poker…as the song lyrics denote. Since it’s a country song, it must be incredibly meaningful and heart-wrenchingly emotional. This is most notably demonstrated when chicken reappears as a major plot point, where the guy lovingly makes eye contact with his lady friend in the kitchen and forms a deep bond over a plate of fried chicken.Yay, America.

The next song that was nominated was “Even if It Breaks Your Heart”, a song by the aptly and cleverly named band known as the Eli Young Band. I have no idea where this song is going, and I really have no idea what it’s about. It’s like the country music version of posting really vague statuses on Facebook or Twitter that nobody else cares about or wants to see. People tend to dislike those status messages. Kind of like how I dislike this song.

Miranda Lambert’s “I Miss You” is pretty terrible. It’s basically about attachment problems.

You went away, how dare you?

I’m not going to ever get over you.

If you want to hear this crap, take Psych. It won’t be taught by a country singer that sounds remarkably like a duck. And this was the song that won. What?  

On a related note, the song’s actually about Lambert’s husband’s dead brother, who died in a car accident. This makes me feel really bad about criticizing this song.

Whoops.

Eric Church isn’t that bad at singing. “Springsteen” is pretty decent. I don’t understand it at all, and that’s okay. The music video is terrible, and that’s less okay. Someone, presumably Eric Church, plays piano in the middle of the street. Church wears an American flag scarf and the video alternates between shots of people playing music in the middle of streets, causing terrible traffic congestion which somehow lead to other events that are evidently related to country music, including (but not limited to!) a bar fight. After the song, I still don’t know what a Springsteen is. Just kidding; he’s obviously a country singer.

The last song nominated, “Wanted”by Hunter Hayes, is bad. Hunter Hayes looks like he’s 12, and sings like he’s Taylor Swift. Unfortunately, Taylor Swift is pretty terrible at the whole singing thing. It also doesn’t help that Hayes wears eyeliner.

Although Miranda Lambert won something, in the end, I think it’s safe to say that country music really deserves no awards.

Especially if you’re Taylor Swift; then, you don’t get nominated.