Brett Young Feels Like He Belongs
When artists go to awards shows for the first time, they can sometimes feel a little left out.
That's kind of what happened to Brett Young before he had his two hit songs, "Sleep Without You" and "In Case You Didn't Know."
"The first award show that I attended (was) a week before my first single went to radio. And I remember feeling like, 'What am I doing here?' Kind of fish out of water," Young told CMT Hot 20.
That all changed recently, though, when "In Case You Didn't Know" hit the top of the charts. Now he says that there's something very cool about seeing his name on the ballot, like it is at the CMT Music Awards. "In Case You Didn't Know" is nominated for breakthrough video of the year.
"You put material out and you just hope people connect with it and enjoy it, so the fact that it connected so well that it got put up for an award is extremely humbling and flattering."
He says that he kept the video as simple as possible, to reflect the simple love story in the song.
"In order to let people make it their story, we didn't want to tell too much of our own story. That's how we wrote the song, and that ended up being what we wanted to do for the video. That's why there's not a lot of interaction with the girl in the video. It's just really simple -- just me and a guitar and a song -- and we let it be about the lyrics," he said.
This weekend's edition of CMT Hot 20 Countdown, airing June 3-4 at 9 a.m. ET/PT, will be all about the 2017 CMT Music Awards with interviews with this year's nominees, performers and host Charles Esten.
Also on the show, Luke Combs is hanging out and performing his hit single, "Hurricane." Plus, Jason Aldean talks about becoming a dad again, his big year and his new exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
The CMT Music Awards will air live from Nashville next Wednesday night (June 7) on CMT.
Online voting to determine the winners in nine categories including Breakthrough Video of the Year, Collaborative Video of the Year, CMT Performance of the Year and Social Superstar of the Year continues through June 5 via CMT.com.
The top seven finalists for the night's biggest award, the highly-coveted Video of the Year, will be revealed the morning of June 7. Fans will be able to vote live for the winner.
