Taylor Swift seemingly shocked the country music world when she took home the award for Female Vocalist of the Year at last night's 43rd CMA Awards.  The 19 year-old superstar broke records once again by taking that award and three more awards.

James Otto was a virtual unknown to the music world prior to "Just Got Started Lovin' You," a song so big that it not only became 2008's biggest country hit but also remained so popular that follow-up singles weren't played as much.  Will this song suffer the same fate?James Otto was a virtual unknown to the music world prior to "Just Got Started Lovin' You," a song so big that it not only became 2008's biggest country hit but also remained so popular that follow-up singles weren't played as much.  Will this song suffer the same fate?

Listen to the first single from James Otto's upcoming album.

Sugarland leads the CMT Music Award nominee list with 6 video nominations. The star duo, which recently won the Top Duo award at the 44th ACM Awards, was quickly followed by Taylor Swift and Brad Paisley with four nominations each. Click to see the rest of the nominees.

Here's the music video for the third single from James Otto's "Sunset Man" album.

Here's the video for James Otto's popular Grammy-nominated single.

The record business is notoriously fickle and not prone to second chances yet here James Otto is with his second release. Does his perseverence pay off or fall flat?

To be successful in life, most people have to work hard.  Some musicians have to work even harder to succeed, especially when many have deemed them a failure.  Otto overcame those obstacles to score a Grammy nomination with this single, Country's biggest hit of 2008.

While the song lyric is very important to country music, if the voice singing the words doesn't have at least an interesting voice, then what's the point?  Without a good voice and words, a song is just music.  So really gifted vocalists always will grab my attention. Todd O'Neill is one of those people and "Real Life" is his first album.

Outside of talk stations, country music is the radio format with the most stations dedicated to it.  Country radio charts (which determine what a number one hit is) are split up into two levels: Major markets and everybody else.  Is this right?  Is it another example of corporate consolidation gone awry? Is it good for the country music industry?