I just loved this part: We sing about God because we believe in Him. We are not trying to offend anybody, but the evidence that we have seen of Him in our small little lives trumps your opinion about whether or not He exists.
Nashville, TN -- The CMT Music Awards have a grand history of show-stopping performances, all of them rendered by such country music superstars as Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Gretchen Wilson and Big & Rich, to name only a few.
But it was host Jeff Foxworthy who stopped the show this year, when the generally genial comedian delivered a powerful, heartfelt and somewhat angry speech just before introducing the last song of the night, the haunting Anyway by Martina McBride.
Foxworthy had during his previous two gigs as host of CMT's annual awards presentation appeared in memorably funny musical performances. At the start of the 2005 show he was seen suspended above the stage with Billy Currington, the two of them whirling about in a spoof of the video for Shania Twain's Party for Two, in which Twain and Currington similarly twirl. Last April he opened the show dancing with Lisa Rinna, a competitor at the time on ABC's Dancing with the Stars.
But this year, Foxworthy's opener was a simple pre-taped sketch inspired by his gig as host of Fox' midseason hit Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? featuring country singer and Nashville Star judge Blake Shelton playing opposite kids pretending to be Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson and other country stars. It was a charming but low-key bit that left some of us wondering if this edition of the CMT Awards would pass without a Foxworthy Moment that people would be talking about for weeks to come.
And then, with only minutes to spare, Foxworthy came through in a way nobody could have predicted. He delivered a quiet, compassionate, deadly serious commentary that was ostensibly about country music and its fans, but spoke to, about and against so much more, expressing points of view not commonly heard in entertainment programming on major television networks.
The audience didn't know how to react at first, but quickly began cheering Foxworthy along as made his points. After musing for a moment about all of the country music award shows he has hosted (including some not on CMT), Foxworthy said that as he prepared for this particular gig he began contemplating his interest in the genre. He then said the following, to periodic cheers and applause from the audience at the Curb Event Center at Belmont University:
"I started thinking about why I like country music and doing this show so much, and here's what I came up with, y'all.
"I like country music because it's about the things in life that really matter. It ain't about braggin' about how you're gonna mess somebody up, or how somebody ain't respectin' ya. It's about love, family, friends -- with a few beers, a cheap woman and a two-timin' man thrown in for spice. It doesn't take political sides, even with things as ugly as war. Instead, it celebrates the brave men and women who go to fight 'em, the price they pay to do it and the longin' we have for them to return home to the ones that they love.
"It's about kids and how there ain't nothin' like 'em. I get tired of hearin' about how bad kids are today, because there are a lot of great kids out there that just need somebody to love 'em and believe in 'em. Country folks love their kids and they will jack you up if you try to mess with 'em!
"People in country music don't forget the people that allow them to do what they do for a livin'. They sign autographs and they take pictures with the fans because they know without 'em most of us entertainers would be gettin' a lot dirtier in the course of our workday. We are thankful that people want to hear the songs and the jokes that we write. Country music doesn't have to be politically correct. We sing about God because we believe in Him. We are not trying to offend anybody, but the evidence that we have seen of Him in our small little lives trumps your opinion about whether or not He exists.
"We love country music because it touches us where we live. It's about mommas, and when they were hot, and when they are unappreciated, and when they were dyin'. It's about daddies and the difficulties they have sometimes at tellin' the people that they work so hard to protect and provide for how they feel about 'em.
"Country music is about new love and it's about old love. It's about gettin' drunk and gettin' sober. It's about leavin' and it's about comin' home. It's real music sung by real people for real people, the people that make up the backbone of this country. You can call us rednecks if you want. We're not offended, 'cause we know what we're all about. We get up and go to work, we get up and go to church, and we get up and go to war when necessary.
"All we ask for is a few songs to carry us along the way, and that's why I love this show, because it ain't some self-important Hollywood hype with the winners determined by somebody else. On this show, you decide who goes home with a trophy and you get to dance and sing along with the people that bring you the songs of your life."
What was behind Foxworthy's need to express these sentiments? In the pressroom after the show, he said he wrote it after thinking about why he likes to host the CMT Awards as much as he does. After completing it, he told us, the first person he took it to was his wife.
"I read it to her and she goes, 'I love it but they're never going to let you say it. You're supposed to be funny and it's pretty serious'," Foxworthy recalled. "When I showed up [at CMT] and we were talking about [the end of the show] -- usually at the end they have a big number, like Big & Rich, some kind of party song -- they were sayin', 'We've got kind of a serious song at the end with Martina singin' Anyway, how do you think we should tee it up?' I said, 'Well it's weird you say that. I have somethin' in my bag that I wrote five weeks ago that my wife said you wouldn't let me say.' I let them read it and they were like, 'Yeah, we love it, say it."
"The comic people don't ever expect you to be serious about somethin', but I have a serious side," Foxworthy concluded. "I have a real serious side."
No argument there.
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