Miranda Lambert and Luke Bryan were among the big winners at the 50th Academy of Country Music Awards last Sunday night.
Voted by fans as the entertainer of the year, Bryan triumphed over Lambert, Garth Brooks, Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line with which the honor was presented to him by Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler.
With a whopping eight nominations, Lambert bagged multiple awards at this year's ACMs, including female vocalist of the year, song of the year for "Automatic" and album of the year for "Platinum."
Keith Urban and Eric Church kicked off the awards event by paying tribute to 78-year-old singer and songwriter Merle Haggard. The country music stars performed "Pledge Allegiance to the Hag' and "Raise "Em Up', to which the crowd responded well.
Urban and Church were only two among the artists in the country music genre who graced the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas with their presence.
At the beginning of the show, it was announced by hosts Bryan and Blake Shelton that this year's ACMs had set a Guinness World record for having the highest number of attendees for a live awards show in history. The awards event was moved to outside Dallas, which was a significant change from its traditional Las Vegas spot.
One of the first awardees was George Strait, who was honored with the Milestone Award following his performance of his new song "Let It Go' as well as the classic single "All My Ex's Live in Texas.' Aside from Strait, other honorees of the 50th Anniversary Milestone Awards included Lambert, Brooks, Taylor Swift, Kenny Chesney, Reba McEntire and Brooks & Dunn.
Kelly Clarkson, whose husband is McEntire's stepson Brandon Blackstock, presented McEntire with the Milestone award and called her "the coolest mother-in-law." Swift's mother, Andrea, who was diagnosed recently with cancer, presented the Milestone Award to her daughter and shared about being Swift's best and closest companion as she grew up.
Aside from the Milestone honors, Florida Georgia Line bagged the award for vocal duo of the year while Little Big Town raked in the vocal group of the year award. Aldean received the honor for male vocalist of the year.
All in all, 23 artists performed live across the two stages of this year's ACMs; these include Lee Brice performing "Forever and Ever, Amen' and giving a shout-out to Randy Travis who has often missed public events after undergoing brain surgery and recovering from a 2013 stroke.
Pop music was also brought on to the stage as Christina Aguilera joined Rascal Flatts for "Shotgun' while Nick Jonas performed with country music duo Dan + Shay.
The 2015 ACMs also ended with a performance from Jake Owen and Darius Rucker, who fittingly played the upbeat classic song "Let The Good Times Roll.'
