A golden couple. Photo: Getty Images

The CMAs took a cue from the Grammys to become an even greater performance-heavy presentation.

Most of the hour concentrated on live acts, until the recently shorn Kellie Pickler and Darius Rucker presented song of the year honors to Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton for “Over You,” leading Shelton to express a profoundly emotional speech.

“I lost my brother in a car wreck when I was 14 years old and later in life when I decided I wanted to be a country singer, my dad always told me, ‘Son, you should write a song about your brother.’ I lost my dad in January, and it’s so amazing to me that tonight even after he’s gone, he’s still right,” Shelton said, as Lambert burst into tears.”I needed the right person to write this song with and the right person to sing it,” he continued, and gave Lambert a kiss.

As for some of those performances:

• Tim McGraw playing the languid ballad “One of Those Nights,” from his just-announced “Two Lanes of Freedom” album.

• Lambert continued to demonstrate why she must be the most fun person at any party with a rip-roaring version of “Fastest Girl in Town,” which perfectly showcased her trademark feistiness.

• Atlanta’s Zac Brown Band started beautifully with “Goodbye in Her Eyes,” but the song veered into severely uneven harmonizing about halfway through.

• The Band Perry was mesmerizing with “Better Dig Two,” an evocative country-rocker with a touch of darkness.

• Eric Church of course played “Springsteen,” his top-nominated song of the night that uses the Boss as the backdrop for a song that is really about memories of a girl. But he truly paid homage this time, including some of “Born to Run” into his nasally CMA performance.