Carrie Underwood Aiming for Elegance, Not Politics, at 2016 CMA Awards

Carrie Underwood will return, along with good friend Brad Paisley, to co-host the CMA Awards for the ninth year in a row in 2016. The two country stars have eight years of CMA ceremonies under their belts, which is good experience to have, as they're planning a few surprises in honor of the awards show's 50th anniversary.

"It’s obviously a huge year," Underwood recently told The Boot and other reporters. "I don’t want to give anything away, but they’re doing some really cool ... I hate to even call them promos, because it’s more of just a celebration of our genre of music: the past, the present and the future."

Underwood is known for her elegant gowns and quick costume changes throughout the live broadcast, and she's already plotting how many dresses she can wear in one night.

"I just go in, I try on things, and I say, ‘I like 20 dresses, so how can I wear them all?’" she quips. "It’s always exciting."

This year, in honor of the CMA Awards' 50-year milestone, Paisley even might get in on the action, trading in his jeans for fancier attire.

"We want it to feel like the 50th year. We want it to be big and be beautiful and be elegant," says Underwood. "Brad says he’s going to wear a tux. We’ll see. We’ve been kind of already initially starting to talk about the tone we want to set for the awards, because it is, like I said, a special one."

Underwood, who is nominated for four trophies, including Female Vocalist of the Year and the night's highest honor, Entertainer of the Year, at the 2016 CMA Awards, says that she and Paisley are already deep into the planning stages for the three-hour broadcast. And although fans can count on plenty of humorous one-liners and zingers from the hosts, they hope to stay far away from addressing the contentious presidential election.

"I prefer to stay away from politics," Underwood shares. "This is country music, and we have 50 years to cover. So I feel like we’ll have lots to talk about, but I think it will be more geared to just us and what we do and all these legends that we have and people that have incredible talent that we have in our genre."

The 2016 CMA Awards will air live from Nashville's Bridgestone Arena on Nov. 2.

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