Keith Urban, Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves win at CMA awards 2018

Keith Urban has been awarded the top prize of entertainer of the year at the 2018 Country Music Association (CMA) awards, with Chris Stapleton and Kacey Musgraves also picking up major gongs.

Urban told the audience in Nashville, which included his wife, Nicole Kidman: “I wish my dad was alive to see this, but I think he’s watching over me tonight,” as he picked up his award. It comes after a year in which he released his 10th album, Graffiti U, which included Female, a song reacting to the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

Missing out on the top prize was the much-fancied Stapleton, who nevertheless won three other awards: male vocalist of the year, and song and single of the year for Broken Halos. He released two albums in 2017, each reaching No 2 in the US charts, and has since scored a hit duet with Justin Timberlake: Say Something, one of three songs he wrote for the R&B star’s album Man of the Woods. Stapleton acknowledged this busy schedule in an acceptance speech, apologising to his children for “not getting to be as good as a dad as I would always like to be”.

Musgraves beat Urban and Stapleton to album of the year for the hugely acclaimed Golden Hour, beating an all-male, more commercial, rest of her field. “This is really, really crazy timing, because I just realised this morning – it sounds like a lie – 10 years ago today, I moved to Nashville,” she told the audience.

Female vocalist of the year was won by the awards’ co-host Carrie Underwood – she bounced back from a fall in November 2017 that left her with 40 stitches in her face to release Cry Pretty, which topped the US album charts in September. She jokingly alluded to the accident by wearing a dress made of bubble wrap, one of 11 outfits across the evening.

Old Dominion won vocal group of the year, while Brothers Osborne won the vocal duo award. Guitarist Mac McAnally won the musician of the year award for the 10th time – 2016 remains the only year he hasn’t won since 2008 – and musical event of the year was awarded to David Lee Murphy and Kenny Chesney for their song Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.

Unlike last year’s ceremony, where hosts Underwood and Brad Paisley made jokes about Donald Trump, Paisley had promised there would be no political humour, saying before the ceremony: “I just don’t find politics funny anymore.” There was however a moment of silence for the victims of the mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, led by Garth Brooks, who said: “Let the music unite us with love in their enduring memory.”