Blake Shelton was surprised to win CMA Entertainer of the Year. There was much competition.

”There’s Taylor Swift right there. I mean, really? This is pretty dumb that there’s anybody else nominated,” Shelton said backstage Thursday night.

Shelton’s position has been attributed to the huge amount of exposure he’s recieved as a coach on NBC’s “The Voice,” but he stressed that country music is still his first priority.

“I’ve got so much more I want to do,” Shelton said of his music career. “I’m still trying to figure out how to even schedule all the things that I want to do.”

– Miranda Lambert also shared the CMA Song of the Year for co-writing “Over You.” Inspiration for the song came from Shelton’s late brother, who passed away in a car accident many years ago.

“I spoke it out to the universe, I would love to take it,” she said backstage.

 “He has this thing where he won’t say it because he thinks you’re hexing it or something,” Lambert stated.

Additionally, she took home her third straight Female Vocalist trophy Thursday night.

“I feel like there’s a time for every artist to have their time, and you don’t know when that time’s gonna be over or when it’s gonna happen,” she said.

Lambert expressed her support for her husband Shelton who she believes genuinely merited the award.

“I realized that it just meant not only touring numbers, not only ticket sales or how much production you have, but the way that you represented country music within a year,” Lambert said.

– Eric Church’s “Chief” was labelled as CMA Album of the Year Thursday night, and he expressed his gratitude to the country community for granting him a home during his acceptance speech. Church’s brand of country has a well-known rock essence to it, and he reflects upon country music’s popularity is increasing.

“Whatever’s happened over the last five, six, seven years, that’s all I see now,” Church said. “Frankly, I think country has always been the coolest format. I just think that’s now it’s in a great space creatively.”

Speaking about “Chief,” Church said, “We kinda had nothing to lose when we made this record. We let creativity be the driver, and in doing that, in doing it that way, I think that’s hopefully how you end up with something like this.”

– Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney won their second Musical of the Year trophy Thursday for “Feel Like a Rock Star.”

“We’d sit back in our apartments back in the old days, we would never dream of this. Well, we’d dream about it,” McGraw reminisced backstage.

CMA New Artist of the Year Hunter Hayes completed his first performanceon the show and confided that he was truly nervous and anxious.

“I’m a huge fan of so many people sitting in this room, and I respect them so much, and I just want them to like me,” Hunter said with a laugh of his first CMA performance. “I want to do a good job.”