Hearty congratulations to Taylor Swift! Not because she won four trophies at last night’s CMAs, though.

Or because she’s the youngest-ever CMA Entertainer Of The Year. No, congratulations should go to Taylor Swift because she managed to get through all of her acceptance speeches without being interrupted by a hieroglyphic-haired berk with a weird compulsion to unfavourably compare her to Beyonce – the first time this has ever happened.

But then how could Kanye West possibly unfavourably compare anyone at a country music awards show? “Imma let you finish, but Darius Rucker is one of the most derivative, tedious and inbred-looking singers of all time. OF ALL TIME!”? Hardly.

Right now Taylor Swift has got everything she ever wanted. The Kanye West thing made her a household name. She’s hosted Saturday Night Live. She’s got a boyfriend who doesn’t understand how clothes work.

And, most importantly, she deals with a genre of music that’s so uniformly generic and terrible that she comes across as a bravely innovative pioneer just because she isn’t a toothless 90-year-old man who plays the banjo, whistles when he tries to pronounce any word with the letter S in it and routinely gets cautioned by police for firing shotguns at children who stray too close to his porch.

And that’s why Taylor Swift cleaned up at last night’s Country Music Awards. We’ll get straight to the details, courtesy of Reuters:

Taylor Swift claimed a piece of music history on Wednesday when she became the youngest artist ever to win the coveted title of Entertainer of the Year at the Country Music Awards. Swift, 19, also claimed awards for Female Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year and Album of the Year. “I’ll never forget this moment because at this moment everything that I ever wanted has just happened to me,” a tearful Swift said.

More than that, though, Taylor Swift must be relieved that nobody staged a Kanye-style speech interruption during any of her wins. Because this is country music we’re dealing with – if people don’t like you, they won’t simply imply that another singer deserved to win ahead of you, they’ll either strangle you or marry you and then molest some children or, if the interrupter is Billy Joe Shaver, simply shoot you in the face because you looked at him funny.

Still, you know who we feel sorry for here? Kenny Chesney. Up until now he’d won the CMA Entertainer Of The Year award four times in five years – possibly only because he likes to wear unusually large hats sometimes – and so he must have thought that he’d be a shoo-in for this year’s title, too. But, no, Taylor Swift has gone and spoilt all of that, the cow.

However, Kenny Chesney didn’t get where he is by not moving with the times, and that’s why next year we’re sure we’ll be seeing him copy some of Taylor Swift’s tricks. He’ll ask to present Saturday Night Live, for starters, and if we don’t see him out and about on the arm of a topless 17-year-old boy by Christmas we’ll be stunned. Because, you know, we heard those rumours too.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

Every year the ACM awards – like the Grammys but more buck-toothed and NASCAR-fixated – end up the same way.

Kenny Chesney wins. Every year – no matter how obviously unentertaining he’s been – Kenny Chesney wins the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award, even though he basically has a hat instead of an actual personality.

But this year the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award went to Carrie Underwood, who is female. Carrie Underwood’s win shocked the country music community, with some members worried that if women can win gender-unspecific ACM awards then next they’ll be allowed to vote or drive or something.

The ACM Entertainer Of The Year award has always been Kenny Chesney’s to lose. For some reason – we’re guessing that it’s because the majority of country singers routinely confuse ‘charisma’ for ‘uncomfortable xenophobia’ or ‘assaulting women in the face‘ – Kenny Chesney managed to walk away with the award for four years on the trot.

And, truth be told, Kenny Chesney would have probably won it this year too, if only he hadn’t been such a monumental turd about it last time around. And even though throwing a tantrum because an award was voted for by fans instead of an anonymous panel of industry insiders was by default the most entertaining thing he’d ever done, it pretty much destroyed any hope of him winning it again this year.

That meant the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award was wide open this year – it could have been won by the recovering alcoholic or the annoying virgin or that fat woman – but in the end it was won by none other than Carrie Underwood. Given that we couldn’t hum a single Carrie Underwood song to you even if you put a gun to our heads, we’re guessing that Carrie Underwood won for the entertaining way that she a) never takes her clothes off, b) never eats delicious meat and c) never reveals any personal secrets about herself whatsoever.

Because, you know, all of these are the epitome of entertainment, right? Right? Hello? Anyway, People reports:

Carrie Underwood became the first woman since 2001 to be named ACM entertainer of the year – and only the seventh female to win the Academy of Country Music’s top honor since it was first handed out in 1970. “I’ve had a lot of good moments in the last four years. This one takes the cake!” said a teary-eyed Underwood. “I don’t know what to say! I got nothing.”

While it’s good to see Carrie Underwood win the ACM Entertainer Of The Year Award – especially since it means that the country music community no longer sees women exclusively as objects to compose identikit trucker ballads with tortuous punny titles about – we are a little worried about the precedent that it sets.

After all, Carrie Underwood is from American Idol. And now that reality TV stars are being allowed to infiltrate the ACM awards, it’s highly probable that Adam Lambert will win the award next year. And then, the year after that, the woman with the funny mouth who got kicked off The Apprentice a couple of weeks ago. And then the next thing you know, someone’s remade The Wild Bunch with Clay Aiken, Renaldo Lapuz, Maureen off Driving School and Piers Morgan. Look us in the eye and tell us that’s something you actually want. Piers Morgan, for crying out loud.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

And we’re not the only ones, because Kenny Chesney – a man with a big hat and hardly any charisma – has just won the CMA Entertainer Of The Year award for the fourth time in five years, making him officially the most entertaining country singer ever born. Except for Garth Brooks. He’s equally entertaining.

This must count as one of Kenny Chesney’s proudest moments. Now he can look back on all the other country singers of the past and know he’s more entertaining than them. He’s more entertaining than Billy Shooter, Old Jeb Clovercleb, Whistlin’ Jimmy McFormaldahide, Redeyes O’Murderer and even, in a controversial twist, Barefoot Bobby And The Pregnant Mistakes. Congratulations, Kenny Chesney. You earnt this.

Being an entertaining country singer is a lot like being a successful plate-spinner – you have to try and make references to farming equipment at the same time as keeping up your quota of lengthy pun-filled song-titles, without forgetting about blind patriotism that regularly veers into racism or the fact that your personal life has to include some form of mild tragedy.

It sounds exhausting, which is why we should all be congratulating Kenny Chesney for being named the most entertaining country performer at last night’s Country Music Awards – something he seems to have been given for being the only country performer who hasn’t punched any of his fans or shot a stranger in the face recently.

More than that, in fact, Kenny Chesney has now won the CMA Entertainer Of The Year award four times in five years, more than anyone else except for Garth Brooks, whose record he has tied. And, to think, all he had to do to get there was marry a skinny actress briefly and constantly deny that he’s gay.

Obviously what makes Kenny Chesney so entertaining is his noble humility, which he displayed last night after winning his award. AP reports:

“Winning entertainer of year for the fourth time in five years is more than this kid ever dreamed of,” Chesney said backstage. While Chesney knows his reign will eventually end, he said, “I’m not going to lay down. I love the heart, commitment and sacrifice it takes to do this.” And to his competitors, he issued a challenge: “Come and get me.”

We think Kenny Chesney is being too modest. He’s never going to stop being the most entertaining country singer on Earth because, like he said, he understands the sacrifice that winning it takes.

For instance, all Kenny Chesney really wants to do is work 20-hour shifts down a mineshaft every day for the rest of his life but, oh no, there’s always someone on his back telling him to earn millions of dollars by endlessly recycling his one already-generic idea into another best-selling album. Now that’s sacrifice.

But, still, this must be an important award for Kenny Chesney because it’s the first award he’s won for ages where he didn’t act like a turd about it afterwards.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

So, you know, it’s just a shame that Kenny Chesney more or less thinks that all his fans are dicks.

That’s what he’s implied, anyway – yesterday Kenny Chesney won the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award for the fourth straight year running but, because the winner was chosen by fans rather than a faceless group of industry insiders, he’s got all stroppy for it and claimed that it doesn’t count as much any more. Oh Kenny, when will you learn that it’s never smart to criticise your fans, especially when they all own shotguns and are the biological result of institutionalised pan-generational incest.

There was a time when Kenny Chesney was the man who married Renee Zellweger and then split up with her, causing people to – apparently wrongly - assume that he was gay. But not any more. Now everyone knows Kenny Chesney as the most entertaining country singer in the world.

It’s true – meet Kenny Chesney and he won’t hit you with one of those traditional country buzzkills like trying to choke you and kiss you at the same time or shooting you in the face. No, so long as the dictionary definition of the word entertaining is “making the exact same joke about the words ’shift’ and ’shit’ being quite similar nine separate times in the space of one song,” then Kenny Chesney will always be the most entertaining country singer in the world.

Kenny Chesney is on an unbelievable streak of entertainingness, too – he won the ACM Entertainer Of The Year award last year, and he won it the year before that as well. And the year before that. And he won it again at the ACM awards last night, too. That puts him on a equal footing with Garth Brooks and just one shy of the all-time record of five wins, so you’d assume that he’d be thrilled with the result.

Except he really isn’t. For the first time in ACM history. this year’s Entertainer Of The Year award was voted for by the public. You know, the people who actually buy CDs and concert tickets and are probably the best gauge of what’s entertaining and what isn’t. Some people would think that being given a prize by the public is better than being given one by a panel of industry insiders each with their own personal investments and biases, but not Kenny Chesney.

As soon as he won his ACM award last night, Kenny Chesney threw a bit of a tantrum about how he hates the public, especially those who like him enough to go out of his way to vote for him. More or less. Entertainment Weekly reports:

”The entertainer of the year trophy is supposed to represent heart and passion and an amazing amount of sacrifice, commitment, and focus,” Chesney said. “That’s the way Garth [Brooks] won it four times, that’s the way I won it, that’s the way [George] Strait won it, Reba [McEntire], Alabama all those years. That’s what it’s supposed to represent.” Chesney went on to say that the academy turned the award ”into a sweepstakes to see who can push people’s buttons the hardest on the Internet.”

Of course, as galactically stupid of him as it was to suggest that his award was devalued by the public’s involvement, he does have a point. For starters, if this award was mainly voted for by Kenny Chesney fans, then that’s proof enough that none of the voters have any taste whatsoever.

And secondly, Kenny’s right – this sort of vote is just a gimmick, and one that can be easily corrupted by one nominated act exhorting their fans to vote again and again to secure the win.

It’s a good job that Kenny Chesney doesn’t stoop to that level, which is why we’re sure the blurb on the homepage to his website reading…

Kenny Chesney is nominated for his 4th consecutive ACM Entertainer of the Year and we need all of Kenny’s fans to get out and Vote. Below are several tools to share with everyone you know to help spread the word. YOU have the power! VOTE for Kenny Chesney as ACM’s Entertainer of the Year!

…is just a typo. And also that the big ‘Vote for Kenny Chesney’ banner, the two ‘Vote For Kenny Chesney’ graphics that people can embed in their blogs, the gigantic ‘VOTE FOR KENNY CHESNEY AT THE ACM AWARDS’ headline and the four different ‘Vote For Kenny Chesney’ flyers that fans are asked to print out and actually hand to people in the street that all feature heavily at the top of his website are probably the work of bastard hackers or something.

Read more:

Kenny Chesney: Fans Shouldn’t Decide Top ACM Award  - EW

And cowboy awards season has started in earnest now that the nominations for this year's Academy of Country Music awards have been announced.

It looks like it'll be a good year for Kenny Chesney, who's scored double the ACM nominations than any of his competitors. That's probably life-changing news if you follow things like this, so now you can go back to whistling through your teeth and standing on your porch shooting trespassers with your shotgun in peace again.

Remember when Kenny Chesney got married to Renee Zellweger a few years ago? Back then Renee Zellweger was one of the biggest actresses in the world and Kenny Chesney was just a mostly-unknown country artist who mainly wrote songs about bumming tractors.

But how things change. Now Kenny Chesney is on top of the world, singing his songs about trying to force his tongue into the mouth of intangible abstracts and trying to marry some booze to thousands of web-fingered country music aficionados, while Renee Zellweger stars in unfunny cartoons about bees.

It helps, of course, that Kenny Chesney hasn't fallen by the wayside like some of his other country contemporaries. While they get drunk and try to molest waitresses and shoot men in the face, Kenny Chesney has stayed on the straight and narrow – and he's won plenty of awards for doing so.

And that award tally looks set to grow even more come May at the Academy of Country Music awards, because Kenny Chesney has picked up more nominations than anyone else, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Kenny Chesney roped a field-leading 11 nominations for the 43rd Academy of Country Music Awards on Tuesday, scoring in every major category in which he was eligible and landing nearly double the total for any other performer… Chesney got multiple nods in three categories — album, single and vocal event — because he is the performer and producer of those entries. He collected three nominations in the vocal event category: two for his double entendre-laced duet with George Strait on "Shiftwork," and a third because he joined Tim McGraw as a guest on Tracy Lawrence's single "Find Out Who Your Friends Are."

Among his ACM nominations, Kenny Chesney has picked up an Entertainer Of The Year nod. That's his category of choice – if he wins this year it'll be his fourth successive win. But what makes Kenny Chesney so entertaining? Is it his flamboyant wardrobe? His songs like Dancin' For The Groceries? The fact that he's the only country performer to have his marriage to a Hollywood star annulled on the grounds of fraud?

Or is it that country music is basically the least entertaining form of music ever created and Kenny Chesney just happens to be closest? Yes, it's probably that last one.

Read more:

Chesney leads country music award nominations - LA Times