The stars of the show were undoubtedly hosts Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan, who took great delight in making fun of each other and all the performers and nominees all night in genuinely funny bits. They came to the stage dressed as Daft Punk, they tried to top Ellen's Oscar selfie stunt and decided they were the only famous enough people in-house to take a selfie of, and of course their bad Letterman jokes. Pair that with shout-outs to same-sex marriage and legalizing drugs in their opening monologue, this was not your mama's ACMs.

The debut TV performances of new singles from Miranda Lambert and Lady Antebellum were crowd favorites, with the latter bringing Stevie Nicks on stage to join them and busting into a few verses of the Fleetwood Mac hit "Rihannon" which brought the whole theater to their feet.

Another performance that grabbed the crowd's attention far above the many others in the telecast was host Luke Bryan doing "Play It Again" on a spinning record. The song had all the heads in camera shot bobbing and it looked like someone told Taylor Swift to stay in her seat for this show or else she'd have been up dancing to this one.

Meanwhile, our co-host Blake Shelton performed with Shakira, debuting a "Medicine", a song featured on the latter's new self-titled album. Shakira is in red lingerie and thigh-highs, bring a touch of pop music stage costumes to a show that doesn't see much of that stuff. This makes Shelton's second duet with a coach from The Voice, following the one he did with Christina Aguilera. Why do all the people on that show want to record duets with him? Is Miranda okay with him doing it with so many other ladies? Guess so!