Click to see a gallery of photos from Sunday night's CMA Music Festival show at LP Field (this image of Taylor Swift: Larry McCormack/The Tennessean).Duo the JaneDear Girls opened the last of four CMA Music Festival stadium shows at LP Field with a set that included the thrusting rock of initial single “Wildflower” and the contemplative ballad “Saturdays In September.” After band member Susie Brown performed a brief and energetic fiddle showcase of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” and “Orange Blossom Special,” Brown and Danelle Leverett closed with current single “Shotgun Girl.”
Jimmy Wayne’s powerful solo set found him playing deft guitar and performing his country hits “Stay Gone” and “Do You Believe Me Now?” along with a cover of the Hall & Oates pop staple “Sara Smile.” Wayne is a rich-voiced singer-songwriter, with a presence that proved capable of captivating a mass live audience.
The Band Perry followed Wayne with a set that traded on accessibility and harmony. Single “If I Die Young” was the group’s best-received song, with a stadium full of fans singing along.
Darius Rucker, who still leads guitar-pop group Hootie & The Blowfish on occasion, opened his country set with “Alright,” and included “Come Back Song” and “I Got Nothin’.” Rucker upped the applause ante with his version of the Hootie single “Only Wanna Be With You,” and his up-tempo song, “This.” Rucker concluded with a medley of past country hits, cementing his appeal with contemporary country fans.
Tracy Lawrence played a set prior to Blake Shelton’s stage turn, singing “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” and other hits. And then Shelton took the stage with “It’s All About Tonight” and delivered a set that included runs through J. Geils Band “Centerfield” and Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative.”
Shelton offered up “Kiss My Country (expletive),” a song that disparages anyone who doesn’t embrace a Confederate ideal, but his warm baritone is more inclusively appealing than that tune’s lyrics. He ended with summertime hit “Honey Bee” and duet “Hillbilly Bone,” with Trace Adkins.
“This next artist I’m going to bring out is a country music innovator, and she is going to melt your faces off,” Shelton said, introducing wife Miranda Lambert. Shelton isn’t impassive, but neither is he incorrect. Lambert began her set with the propulsive “Kerosene,” then delivered the humorous and poignant “Only Prettier.”
“I want to say thank you for the most amazing country fans in world,” Lambert said, before singing ballad “The House That Built Me,” the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music song of the year award winner.
Lambert then introduced her trio partners in The Pistol Annies, Angaleena Presley and Ashley Monroe, and sang “Hell On Wheels,” before closing her set with “White Liar” and “”Gunpowder and Lead.”
Cross-genre superstar Taylor Swift concluded the night with a hit-filled coda. Swift opened her set at 11:35 p.m., with much of LP Field still filled with fans, preceded by a volume-up recording of Tom Petty’s “American Girl.”
“She’s sold more albums this year than any other human being on the planet,” said GAC’s Storme Warren, introducing Swift, whose CMA-ending set reached its climax with “Our Song,” a composition about shared melody, rhyme and memory. Swift’s set was a fitting end to a festival that put music at the forefront, and that spotlighted the interaction between fans and recording artists.
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