Country And Western music seems to be all the rage at the moment, what with the influx of country-influenced American Idol finalists and the newly-rediscovered sport of running over animals in a truck and then cooking them up for dinner and all.

And – apart from Whistlin' Jeb Tenderfoot's Bi-Weekly Banjoganza – there's no greater place to celebrate country music than at the Academy Of Country Music Awards, where just about every country singer you can think of turns up in their smartest pair of dungarees to shoot pistols in the air and drink moonshine every time an award is given out. The nominations for this year's ACM awards have recently been announced, and it looks like it'll be a good year for George Strait; a middle-aged cowboy who we've never heard of, and – since he once recorded a song called Honk If You Honky Tonk – we're not especially keen to, either.

Forget your punk or your hip-hop, kids – if you want to see real bad behaviour, you need to take a look inside the world of country music. That's a world where the men are men, the women are men and the cattle are women. And everyone's related. Seriously – you can't compare. You think Lily Allen is hard for calling Corinne Bailey Rae boring? That's nothing – Hank Williams Jr strangled a waitress because she wouldn't kiss him once. And it's this kind of behaviour that makes the ACM awards the rootingest, tootingest, pedal to the metalest, banjo-twangingest awards ceremony in the world.

Before the ACM nominations were announced, we were expecting a good showing for our three all-time favourite country acts – vocally not gay Kenny Chesney, George Bush-hating pariahs turned George Bush-hating Grammy winning saviours The Dixie Chicks and website-hating all-round rehab cowboy Keith Urban – but that just shows what we know. Kenny Chesney got two ACM nominations, Keith Urban just one and The Dixie Chicks struck out entirely. Instead, the biggest recipient of ACM awards nominations was George Strait, who picked up eight ACM nominations, as Forbes reports:

George Strait led the nominees announced Monday for the Academy of Country Music Awards with eight nominations, including entertainer of the year and top male vocalist. Vocal duo Brooks & Dunn got seven nominations and Rascal Flatts earned six… Carrie Underwood received five nominations and Big & Rich got four… Strait, who has previously won 15 ACM awards, also was nominated as artist and producer for the album "It Just Comes Natural" and the single "Give it Away," which also was nominated for song of the year.

Now, not being country fans ourselves, we've never actually heard of George Strait, and so we did a little research and discovered that George Strait is the performer of hits like You Look So Good In Love, Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind, Baby's Gotten Good at Goodbye, Overnight Male, Don't Make Me Come Over There And Love You and I Hate Everything. And yet George Strait still manages to be the bestest singing cowboy in the world.

The ACM awards take place on May 15 outside a tatty barn in the desert somewhere or something. Yeehaw.

Read more: 

Strait's 8 Top ACM Award Nominations – Forbes