In between the alcoholism, fighting, arrests and child sex abuse, the world of country music has barely had time to record any songs this year, let alone swig moonshine behind a corn silo while pappy twangs along on his banjo.

But that would be discounting George Strait from proceedings. While the rest of the country music industry has done its best to prove that it's the music industry you'd least likely want to be stuck in a car on a long journey with, George Strait has carried on doing what he does best – picking up more cowboy award nominations than anyone else. The Country Music Association just announced the nominees for it's awards this year and, like with the Academy Of Country Music awards, George Strait has picked up the most nominations. Obviously this would be a much more interesting story if we knew who George Strait was, or if country music didn't make us want to bribe a lion to bite our ears off, but shhh.

Actually, we take that last bit back. Country music is easily the rootingest, tootingest, waitress-chockingest, child-molestingest, shoot a man in the cheekingess style of music ever to deny that it's even slightly gay, and we love it for that. Obviously we can't stand the music, but we love that every single country musician around has more personal problems than a 24-hour marathon of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Whether it's Mindy McCready getting arrested for apparently beating up her mother or Keith Urban going to rehab for being drunk all the time, you know that a lot of heartache has gone into the badly-punning, pseudo-philosophical, needlessly-long song titles that country singers love to come up with. That's unless you're George Strait, of course, the old country singer famous for soundtracking a Grand Theft Auto game and writing a song called Honk If You Honky Tonk. Because, you see, George Strait is too busy getting nominated for more country music awards than anyone else to go around shooting strangers in the cheek like his colleagues.

Earlier this year, George Strait got a bunch of ACM awards nominations, a feat that he's now matched by getting a bunch of CMA awards. Yes, they're different. Reuters reports:

Brad Paisley and George Strait topped the list of finalists with five nominations each for the annual Country Music Association awards, the music industry group announced on Thursday. The winners will be named at the 4lst annual CMA Awards Show on ABC-TV November 7, the Nashville, Tennessee-based organization said. One of the five slots Paisley and Strait got was for the coveted "Entertainer of the Year" prize, for which they will compete along with Kenny Chesney, Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban. Paisley also was nominated in the male vocalist, album, single and music video categories while veteran Hall of Famer Strait was nominated for male vocalist, album, musical event and single.

Obviously we're just pretending not to know who George Strait is – only The Beatles and Elvis have had more American number ones than him, and we haven't been able to stop humming hits of his like Blame It On Mexico, 80 Proof Bottle Of Tear Stopper, How Bout Them Cowgirls and My Old Flame Is Burnin' Another Honky Tonk Down since we don't know when. So we'll be rooting for George Strait at the CMA awards in November, and keeping our fingers tightly crossed that he manages to complete his hat-trick by also getting the most nominations at the last of the year's big three country awards – the Red-Eyed Association Of Whistlin' Truckers And Inbred Domestic Abusers, to be held on Old Man Jimminy's front porch once he's scraped the roadkill off his face.

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Paisley And Strait Top Country Music Nods – Reuters