CMA Awards 2012: All the performances as they happen Carrie Underwood arrives for the CMA Awards. Chris Pizzello / Associated Press / November 1, 2012 By Todd Martens November 1, 2012, 4:48 p.m. Welcome, country music fans. What follows will be instant grades of every performance at tonight's Country Music Assn. Awards. This post is written off-site from the CMAs at the LAT HQ, and strives to be as fast and accurate as possible. On tap at the show are performances from the likes of Jason Aldean, Faith Hill, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, among others. This will be updated constantly throughout the night. There may be typos. Enough preamble. Jason Aldean & Eric Church, "The Only Way I Know." The CMA Awards got off to a workmanlike start. As the East Coast recovers from Hurricane Sandy, Aldean and Church kept things simple and straightforward with this sleeves-rolled-up anthem. A nearly romanticized ode to hard, blue-collar work, Aldean sang of soaking in the rain, baking in the sun and getting things done with one's back against the fence. It's stronger in the hands of Aldean, who's a little rougher around the edges. But co-hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley soon took the show down a more lighthearted path, poking fun at Swift, referencing Maroon 5 and doing a little "Gangnam Style" dance. The first 10 minutes captured the line this show will attempt to walk between county and pop. Grade: B. Tim McGraw, "One of Those Nights." The CMA Awards suddenly took a rather steamy turn about 20 minutes in. McGraw's new single, "One of Those Nights," is all about grown-up seduction. The mid-tempo slow-dance - from McGraw's as-yet-unreleased new album "Two Lanes of Freedom" - is close-up image after close-up image of putting on lipstick, whispering in one's ear and getting out of a party. Yet it's all coated in nostalgia. McGraw keeps the song flourish-free, and it only works because it seems to recall moments past, not moments happening.