Awards Shows Galore

Written by Karan Davey, CD Marketing Specialist

This past weekend was full of Award Shows, for kids, for country enthusiasts in the U.S., and for Canada's music industry. It was fun to catch all the music artists receiving awards as well as performing at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, The ACM American Country Music Awards, and the annual Juno Awards in Canada.

The night was full of green slime at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Hosted by Will Smith, the show featured a myriad of performances from Katy Perry to the new UK boy band New Direction. Big Time Rush, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, and LMFAO walked off with Nickelodeon's blimp-shaped award in the music categories. U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama presented singer Taylor Swift with the Big Help Award for all her charity work over the past year.

Taylor Swift continued her busy weekend by attending another award show, The ACM American Country Music Awards. For the second consecutive year, she won the Entertainer of the Year Award, which was the last award of the evening. Earlier, Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum also repeated wins for Female vocalist and Vocal Group of the Year categories. American idol winner, Scotty McCreery, took home the New Artist of the Year prize while Reba McEntire and Blake Shelton once again hosted the award show.

The Juno Awards, Canada’s biggest night in music, was hosted in Ottawa, Ontario. William Shatner served as the master of ceremonies, singing his opening monologue while playing a Les Paul guitar. Nickelback opened the show with fancy pyrotechnics, and a relatively unheard of group from last year, The Sheepdogs, won three awards. Feist was the big winner of the night, snagging three awards including the coveted Artist of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for her album Metals.

Definitely a big weekend! And we've got collections for all three shows. Click the links below to browse now.

• 2012 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award Winners
• 2012 ACM American Country Music Award Winners
• 2012 Juno Award Winners

Audie Award Winners Announced

On May 24^th at The TimesCenter in New York, the Audio Publisher Association hosted the 2011 Audie Awards, the only awards program in the U.S. devoted exclusively to spoken word entertainment. From the best in specific genres to the prestigious Best Audio Book of the Year, the awards honour a wide array of audiobooks, publishers, and talented narrators.

This year Keith Richard’s Life took the highest honour of the night, and narrator Joe Hurley, a New York based pop singer and songwriter, graciously accepted the award:

"‘When I heard they needed me on this project, there were no questions asked,’ said Hurley. ‘I was sound checking Singing Back Home in Paris when I got the call. I went straight to the airport, flew for hours, lost my luggage, and had no sleep, but we recorded it on time and the result is this amazing memoir to music icon, Keith Richards, who I have the privilege of calling a personal friend.’"¹

In addition to Best Audio Book of the Year, Life also won Biography Book of the Year, which Hurley accepted, too. But who else went home with top honours? Here’s the full list of finalists and winners and our collection of winners is now up at cvsmidwesttapes.ca.

¹ LIFE Takes Audie Award

Grammy Nominations Announced In Grand Fashion

What do you do when no one cares about your award nominee announcement? Adding a little Bruno Mars is a good start.

For years, the announcement of nominees for the Grammy Awards, music’s highest honor, consisted of a few randomly selected artists, a podium, and a slew of reporters—all of which assembling at an ungodly early hour in Los Angeles. The artists would then read names from a card as photographers clicked away and giddy entertainment writers feverishly scribbled on their notepads.

The problem was that no one really cared. After all, the nominees would be up on the internet minutes after they were announced.

The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the driving force behind the Grammy Awards, recognized this as an opportunity. Last year, they decided to add a little pizzazz to the proceedings by turning the event into an event—an hour long television special that intersperses live performances from top artists between nominee announcements for each of the major award categories. Think of it as a sort of dress rehearsal for the actual award ceremony in February.

With hip-hop legend—and multiple Grammy winner himself—LL Cool J retaining his spot as host, the second annual edition of the special aired last night.

Performers ranged from pop starlet Katy Perry to country sensation Miranda Lambert to rockers Train, but two standout performances of the unplugged variety—the aforementioned Mars’ stripped down rendition of his smash hit “Just The Way You Are” and Best New Artist nominee Justin Bieber’s heavy-on-the-guitar acoustic version of “Favorite Girl” (straight from the recently released My Worlds Acoustic)—were a step above the rest.

Mars would go on to pull double-duty, later performing the Record of the Year-nominated “Nothin’ On You” with rapper B.o.B, who himself returned to close out the show with “Don’t Let Me Fall.” Viewers may have witnessed the future of the Grammys as Mars and B.o.B., both in the infant stages of their careers, received a combined 12 nominations—and their performances certainly justified such accolades.

In between performances, nominees from five different categories were announced. Aside from a curveball or two, the nominations stuck fairly close to what the experts had predicted.

As expected, Eminem’s name was called more than once. The Detroit rapper picked up an Album of the Year nom for his comeback album Recovery and was also nominated for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year (in case you’re wondering, the Song of the Year award goes to the writer of the song, while the Record of the Year goes to the performer) for “Love The Way You Lie,” his revered collaboration with Rihanna. Em ended up with ten nominations in total by night’s end.

Other prominent nominees included a pair of “Ladies”—Antebellum and Gaga—each nominated for six awards, including Album of the Year. Jay-Z also picked up six nominations, including his song “Empire State of Mind” featuring Alicia Keys, which received a Record of the Year nom.

Surprises on the night included Ray Lamontagne’s “Beg Steal or Borrow” picking up a Song of the Year nomination, the Best New Artist category (which is generally reserved for pop acts) recognizing jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding, and Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream being nominated for Album of the Year despite being left out of most experts’ predictions.

A full rundown of the nominees can be found on our website by clicking the Grammy Nominees panel on our homepage, or by selecting the “Grammy Nominees 2011” collection in the Browse section.

Let the discussions begin—who should win? Who got snubbed? Who put on the best performance last night? Leave your comments below!