It’s the old versus the new in the 43rd Annual ACM Awards.

This doesn’t mean that it’s the traditionalists versus the pop stars, which would make for an interesting showdown. Rather, it’s what happens to awards shows when eligibility criteria are too liberal and not enough good music has been released in the past year: mediocre but current work competes with good work that many have forgotten, and that makes the awards very hard to handicap.

This reality is most evident in the Album of the Year category. Fifth Gear, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Just Who I Am: Poets and Pirates are all mediocre to good albums released since the last ACM Awards, while If You’re Going Through Hell and Taylor Swift were eligible for nomination at the 42nd Annual ACM Awards. So why weren’t those albums nominated the last time around, when it would have made more chronological sense?

The answer is rather an indictment of the awards show process and helps to explain why it’s so difficult to prognosticate. A good album is a good album, regardless of whether it’s the 42nd or the 43rd ACM Awards, but a bestselling album at the 43rd ACM Awards was not necessarily bestselling at the 42nd. The extra year has made a difference only in the number of hit singles that each album has spawned and the number of copies that they have sold, and thus I can only conclude that in this category especially, the Academy hasn’t made a serious attempt to assess musical merit; they’ve simply noticed two albums that have had massive radio success and inferred that they must be great.

Thus, I can’t get my head around the Album category. The Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert efforts stand heads and shoulders above the rest in terms of quality (and, if the 2007 critics’ lists are any indication, Lambert’s would certainly win easily among cross-genre voters), and I have to think that some voters have “forgotten” Taylor Swift’s and Rodney Atkins’ projects, but I can’t get past the fact that they were nominated a year late.

There’s a similar problem in the Vocal Event of the Year category. If this show were held six months earlier, I think that “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” would win in a walk. But this song, along with “What You Give Away” and “’Til We Ain’t Strangers Anymore” have been more or less absent from radio playlists for some time, so I expect that “Shiftwork,” easily the worst of the nominees, will win due to timeliness and star power. Still, I can’t rule out the possibility that voters will remember the more deserving nominees.

The Top New Male Vocalist and Top New Vocal Group or Duo categories are equally anachronistic. In one you have Jack Ingram, a Texas veteran whose brief mainstream radio run may be over, competiting against two true newcomers, while in the other, a duo that has already broken up (The Wreckers) is competiting against a group (Lady Antebellum) that hadn’t even released its debut album at the time that the nominations came out. In this case, the ACM’s glut of new artists categories is more culpable than the idiosyncracies of the awards show process, but it makes the categories rather bizarre nonetheless.

All of this makes this year’s awards difficult to predict, but the editors of The 9513 have done our best.

In the Entertainer of the Year category, the editors disagree about whether the introduction of fan voting will finally give Rascal Flatts the trophy that they so covet, but everyone except Jim thinks the Brad Paisley will follow up on his CMA win with the ACM Top Male Vocalist Award and everyone expects that Carrie Underwood will fend off Taylor Swift to defend her Top Female Vocalist Award. The Song of the Year and Single of the Year categories cause some disagreement: we think that “Don’t Blink” and “Stay” are the top contenders, but we aren’t sure who will win what.

The only way to find out is to tune into the 43rd Annual ACM Awards, Sunday at 7 p.m. central on CBS. While you’re watching, visit The 9513 for our live blog and join in the discussion. Insightful commentary, witty asides and engaging reader discussion is promised.

Feel free to add your own predictions below; any commenters who score better than the best The 9513 editor will be recognized in our post-ACM Awards wrap-up.

For more The 9513 ACM Awards Coverage, be sure to read my article about who should have been nominated and view the full list of nominees.

This song should form one half of a teaching case in the difference between good and mediocre mainstream country. Ashley Gearing’s second charting single (and her first for Curb Records) sounds familiar. Indeed, Sara Evans had a smash with the same kind of song in 2004: young girl meets boy, runs off and lives happily ever after while her family is left wondering what happened. It’s a clever idea, and the fact that it doesn’t sound as good the second time around has more to do with poor execution than redundancy.

First, songwriting. “Suds in the Bucket” smartly centered on a single image, a girl who left so fast and spontaneously that she “left the suds in the bucket and the clothes hanging out on the line,” and that choice made for an endearing hook. Conversely, Green, Lindsey, Lindsey and Mayo recolor their lyric: first the girl is climbing out of the window to meet her lover, then tossing a bouquet out of the window on their wedding day, and finally gazing out the kitchen window at her children playing in the yard. The result is a hook that, well, sounds like a hook, and as a listener I don’t like to feel as though I’m being manipulated.

Moreover, the writers simply leave too little to the imagination here. In “Suds and the Bucket,” Billy Montana and Tammy Wagoner gave us great, memorable images of a church congregation sitting with mouths agape at the runaway, while the best that these writers can offer are heavy-handed lines like “five years later they were happy ever after making babies.”

Gearing’s performance is technically unimpeachable but regrettably unremarkable. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect a 16 year old to infuse a song with the kind of effervescence and personality that characterizes Evans’ “Suds,” but Gearing nonetheless misses any chance she had to improve the song by her performance. Ashley has a strong voice that is easy to listen to but hard to remember, but it may well improve as she matures. However, she makes this mediocre song listenable enough that it earns a very qualified thumbs up.

Listen: Ashley Gearing - “Out the Window”

Someone “should’ve said no” to this one.

Problem number one is that this song is way too loud. It starts out with that nice banjo lick and then – wham! – I’m diving for the volume control.

Problem number two is the distorted background vocal, used only once, when Taylor echoes herself on “give back to me,” which makes it an even odder production choice. Really, it makes me think that whoever dreamed this one up had grander things than country radio in mind.

Problem number three is that Taylor’s vocal performances, even on studio tracks, just seem to be getting worse. In reality, all of these singles are from the same album and were recorded in a sequence unrelated to the single chronology, so Taylor’s not actually getting worse (right?), but I must be getting better at noticing it. The magic of the studio can iron out Taylor’s vocals enough that the obvious pitch problems that characterize her live performances are gone, but this performance is still grating to listen to, because even when Taylor is not pitchy, she’s screechy.

Problem number four is that I don’t anticipate that a large portion of Taylor’s fanbase will be able to identify with this song. This isn’t burning an ex’s picture for some real or imagined transgression, and I don’t think that cheating, the event that precipitated this breakup, is endemic in U.S. suburban high schools (at least not cheating of the country variety). But Matt, you’ve called on Taylor to write and record more mature material. How can you not like a cheating song?

Enter problem number five: Taylor’s vocal interpretations are just not amenable to material like this. This is a cheating song, not an ode to puppy love, yet Taylor’s performance still sounds like a hair-flipping come-on to a high school crush. The result is a song that sounds, despite the subject, like the least mature thing that Taylor Swift has ever put out.

And it’s that last problem that concerns me the most. I’d like to think that Swift can only get better as she matures, but “Should’ve Said No” has me doubting that making music for middle schoolers is something that Taylor will ever outgrow.

Listen: Taylor Swift - “Should’ve Said No”

Despite massive (though declining) ratings, the show that markets itself as the proverbial finger on the pulse of America’s collective pop-R&B Top 40 conscious has produced only one legitimate star in that genre. Aside from Kelly Clarkson and fledgling rocker Daughtry, AI has been unable to exert anything beyond a transient influence on mainstream music despite seven years of ruling the network television airwaves. The executives that expected to produce a Kelly Clarkson every season have thus far produced a Kelly Clarkson, a Carrie Underwood and a bevy of B-list country stars. In the face of declining ratings and “American Idols” that can barely finish the American Idols Live! tour before having to beg for a spot on Dancing With the Stars, AI has reluctantly adopted the Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler model, and contestants better be ready to play the part.

The judges were quick to pin the country tail on Cook, as they do for every beautiful female who lives outside of what can properly be called a metropolitan area and can be photographed on horseback. By the end of her audition, Simon Cowell was already saying that “I like the country tone to your voice” and Randy Jackson asked rhetorically, “You obviously love country music, right?” despite the fact that there was anything particularly country about Cook’s paint by the numbers audition performance of “Amazing Grace.”

The surprise for AI was that Cook actually does love country music, and this became apparent when Cook offended every sensibility that American Idol has with a fiddle-laden, steel-guitar-heavy, country shuffle version of “Eight Days a Week.” The judges were almost speechless. Randy, who at least came within an arm’s length of country music by producing Travis Tritt’s recent album, chuckled uncomfortably before admitting that “I actually liked the idea and arrangement of the song,” but Paula Abdul stammered that “you can’t take what we say, like, go for the country thing, too much to heart…. I didn’t get it,” while Simon seemed outraged: “It was horrendous, actually, you sounded like Dolly Parton on helium…. It was a very brave and probably foolish thing to do because that song just doesn’t work in that style, it was like being at some sort of ghastly country fair or something, you know, a couple of banjo players and you…. There’s one thing having a country style, but to change that song like that, it’s just wrong.”

You know that the judges are reaching when Paula, in typically vacuous fashion, second guesses the judges’ own advice while Simon acts offended that the music of a band that’s been covered by everyone in everyway imaginable is set to the tune of a fiddle. Cook is not nearly the talent of the superstar Underwood, but she’s also not nearly as bad as many judges’ critiques would have you believe. The greatest – and perhaps only – problem with Cook’s performance of “Eight Days a Week”, and her run on the show, is that she seems to confuse twang with poor pitch. But by the standards of American Idol, Cook is almost as good as Kellie Pickler and significantly better than Bucky Covington.

The problem wasn’t Cook’s performance, it was that American Idol doesn’t like country music and resents having to steer all its successful alumni in that direction. Josh Gracin, the first Idol contender to succeed in country music, barely touched the genre in season two, performing only “Ain’t Goin’ Down ‘Til the Sun Comes Up” and “Amazed.” Gracin’s limited success prompted Cowell to remark that he was surprised that the show hadn’t produced a country star, and that same year Carrie Underwood, with the full implied support of show executives, publicly expressed admiration for pop-favorites Rascal Flatts and Broadway-voiced Martina McBride, safe choices given the judges’ aversion to the genre that nonetheless made her the most country Idol to date.

Time has shown that Underwood is a legitimate country artist, but she was demure about that heritage during the show’s run, and her “breakout” performance was not a honky tonk standard but a power ballad by the eighties rock group Heart. Pickler, with her syrupy North Carolina accent, was perhaps the show’s first true “country girl,” and possessed the courage to cover Reba McEntire (Simon: “I hated the song personally, but I thought your performance was very good), Sara Evans, and even Patsy Cline (albeit in Big Band style). Still, by finding an excuse to perform a country song on Lennon & McCartney week, Cook became the first Idol contestant to truly wear country music on her sleeve. That this is a recipe for success has doubtless caused some hand-wringing among Idol management.

I expect that Cook will soon be signed to a major label deal, and AI will happily invite her back to perform on a future show. She’ll have a longer, more productive career and perhaps even greater initial success than the Idol winner. Idol will continue to encourage its artists to embrace the one genre that is providing the show with commercial rewards, but don’t expect them to enjoy it.

Hayes has lots of buzz around him these days and I was happy to see that he was going to be part of the festival. His new album, Trouble in Mind, had sold me on the fact that he was a good songwriter, but I didn’t know quite what to expect from his live act. Would he be a good singer? What kind of band would he have with him?

It didn’t take long for Hayes to make a believer out of me. I was fully ready to be disappointed in his vocals, but his tone was rich and resonant. His band was great as well, mostly, I’d guess, because Hayes knows how to really play acoustic songwriter rhythm guitar, which allows his lead player the luxury to get creative and fill in with accents where necessary.

His chit chat with the crowd was really good too; engaging and amusing.

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Morgan’s first single for BNA (after abruptly leaving Broken Bow earlier this year), “Love Remembers” is a slickly-produced radio track destined to impact the Country charts like no Morgan single before it. From top to bottom, this is not only a hit, but a gigantic, smash hit. It will undoubtedly be one of the handful of songs that defines the summer format, playing out from the exposed speakers of open pick-up doors and ringing, tinny, from compact beach-blanket boom boxes.

In a move that stands to pay huge dividends, Morgan has here abandoned the sometimes quirky, often twangy nature of his music, instead offering what sits as a startling departure from songs like “Redneck Yacht Club” and “International Harvester.”

“Love Remembers” is full of vibrant, colorful imagery (”The taste of cotton candy lip gloss on the lips of a long kiss“) that is nonetheless, at times, disjointed–it is a song less concerned with telling a story in sequence than it is with creating an aesthetic. The concept that “Love Remembers,” as illustrated by various lyrical examples, is far more important here than any specific scenario in the lyric.

The result is a song that sounds really cool–until you start thinking about what it actually means.

In addition to being a song that floats around the edges of various visual motifs (summer, rain), “Love Remembers” copies whole pages from the Rascal Flatts playbook, offering up the kind of crescendoing and over-sung pop-country that the public en masse so readily consumes.

What Morgan set out to do–produce a mega-hit and re-position himself as a top-tier radio contender–he has done not only effectivley but superbly.

But it is still exceptionally disappointing to hear him succumb to the temptations of the format.

Craig Morgan - “Love Remembers”