Toby Keith photo courtesy of Show Dog Nashville.
Nov. 7, 2008 — "The 42nd Annual CMA Awards" roll around on Wednesday, but one member of the country industry is less than excited about the proceedings: Toby Keith.
Toby has been recognized by Forbes as the biggest income-earner in the business at the moment, but he’s nowhere to be found among the CMA nominees, and it’s a fact that rubs him the wrong way. In fact, he’s been feeling a bit tarnished by it all for the last 15 years, when he got snubbed by the organization the first time.
"I shook all the hands, did all the necessary political stuff," he told The Washington Post. "I had a No. 1 song with ‘Should've Been A Cowboy,’ a No. 5 with ‘He Ain't Worth Missing.’ ‘Wish I Didn't Know Now’ and ‘A Little Less Talk And A Lot More Action’ were hits. I sold over a million albums, right out of the box. How many people had bigger breakouts than that in 1993-1994? The easiest award to win at the CMAs should've been the Horizon Award, because it's just for newcomers. There's five people in the category. How many nominations did I get? None."
He eventually piled up 27 nominations, all of them coming between 2000 and 2005. He picked up wins for Male Vocalist of the Year in 2001 and Music Video in 2005, the latter coming for "As Good As I Once Was." But he’s gone dry with the CMA since then.
"How can you be the No. 1 ticket-seller, No. 1 album-seller, Academy of Country Music's Entertainer of the Year?, BMI Songwriter of the Year, American Music Awards winner, Billboard — all of them — and not win? And then they blackballed me. These last two, three years, I haven't been nominated."
It probably shouldn’t matter. His new album, That Don’t Make Me A Bad Guy, was the top-selling country CD in its first week of release. He has his own restaurant chain and his own record label, and he’ll apparently be rolling out a clothing line and his own brand of alcohol in the near future.
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