Chris Stapleton took home four Country Music Association Awards and hardly left the stage on Wednesday night, while an absent Morgan Wallen was shut out all evening until taking the night’s biggest prize, entertainer of the year.

Stapleton’s wins included song of the year and single of the year for “White Horse,” and he took the stage at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, three times to perform during the ABC telecast, including a show-opening duet with Post Malone.

“I’m really honored for this, thank you very much,” the always subdued country traditionalist Stapleton said as he accepted the male vocalist of the year award for a record-extending eighth time.

For much of the night it seemed the leading nominee, Wallen, who was up for seven, would be shut out, until presenter Jeff Bridges gave a botched rendering of his name as “Morgan Waylon” when he announced entertainer of the year.

Four of Wallen’s nominations came for his hit collaboration with Malone, “I Had Some Help,” though the song, and the first-time nominee Malone, went winless.

But the rapper-singer Malone was all smiles all night at the CMAs after releasing his first country album earlier in the year. With Stapleton, he sang his song “California Sober” in full cowboy regalia, including a bolo tie as big as a belt buckle. He later took the stage solo to sing the emotional “Yours,” which he dedicated to his young daughter.

Stapleton later performed his own “What Am I Gonna Do” with his wife Morgane, and performed yet again as part of an all-star tribute to George Strait, who received the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award.

Last year’s entertainer of the year, Lainey Wilson, hosted the show along with Luke Bryan and NFL great Peyton Manning and won two CMAs – female vocalist of the year and best music video for “Wildflowers and Wild Horses.”

For a while it seemed Stapleton would get a sweep, but he lost out on album of the year to a surprised Cody Johnson, who took the trophy for “Leather.”

“I thought Chris Stapleton or Jelly Roll was going to win,” Johnson said.

Old Dominion won vocal group of the year for a record seventh straight time, surpassing the six won by Little Big Town.

The Stapleton-Malone opening and much of the night were a celebration of a time of crossover and collaboration in country.

The telecast, available on Hulu for streaming Thursday, featured performances from artist combos including Brooks & Dunn, representing the 1990s and 2000s, with Jelly Roll, representing country’s current moment. They gave an emotional gospel-style performance of Brooks & Dunn’s 2005 song “Believe.”

Brooks & Dunn followed it up by winning vocal duo of the year for the 15th time and the first time since 2006.

Shaboozey brought the crowd to its feet with a solo performance that began with a bit of his more sober single “Highway” before launching into one of the year’s defining hits, “A Bar Song (Tipsy).”

But he lost out on best new artist to Megan Moroney, who won minutes after her own performance.

“Thank you Jesus for putting this dream on my heart,” Moroney, a 27-year-old from Georgia, said with misty eyes as she accepted the award.

Wilson opened the tribute to Strait by singing part of his best remembered hit, “Amarillo by Morning.”

She was followed by Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Parker McCollum, Stapleton and Strait contemporary Clint Black, who performed pieces of Strait hits including “Troubadour” and “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame”

Stapleton handed the 72-year-old Strait the award previously won by Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Charley Pride and Nelson himself, calling Strait “true country music royalty, the king of country.”

A smiling Strait thanked everyone for the strong renditions of his songs.

“I’m glad I got ’em first,” he said.

The CMA Awards are nominated and voted on by members of the Country Music Association, which includes music executives, artists, publicists, songwriters and other industry professionals. 

U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.

The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department calls for Google to sell its industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions designed to prevent its Android smartphone software from favoring its search engine.

The recommended penalties underscore how severely regulators operating under President Biden believe Google should be punished following an August ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta that branded Google as a monopolist. The Justice Department decision-makers who will inherit the case after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year might not be as strident. The Washington, D.C. court hearings on Google’s punishment are scheduled to begin in April and Mehta is aiming to issue his final decision before Labor Day.

If Mehta embraces the Justice Department’s recommendations, Google will almost certainly appeal the punishments, prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.

Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple’s iPhone and other devices.

Regulators also want Google to share data it collects from people’s queries with its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant.

The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue this year — a moneymaking machine that has given Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.

“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired,” the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”

It’s still possible that the Justice Department could ease off attempts to break up Google, especially if Trump takes the widely expected step of replacing Jonathan Kanter, who was appointed by Biden to oversee the agency’s antitrust division.

Although the case targeting Google was originally filed during the final months of Trump’s first term in office, Kanter oversaw the high-profile trial that culminated in Mehta’s ruling against Google. Working in tandem with Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, Kanter took a get-tough stance against Big Tech that triggered other attempted crackdowns on industry powerhouses such as Apple and discouraged business deals from getting done during the past four years.

Trump recently expressed concerns that a breakup might destroy Google but didn’t elaborate on the alternative penalties he might have in mind. “What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair,” Trump said last month. Matt Gaetz, the former Republican congressman that Trump nominated to be the next U.S. Attorney General, has previously called for the breakup of Big Tech companies.

Gaetz, a firebrand for Trump, faces a tough confirmation hearing.

This latest filing gave Kanter and his team a final chance to spell out measures that they believe are needed to restore competition in search. It comes six weeks after Justice first floated the idea of a breakup in a preliminary outline of potential penalties.

But Kanter’s proposal is already raising questions about whether regulators seek to impose controls that extend beyond the issues covered in last year’s trial, and — by extension — Mehta’s ruling.

Banning the default search deals that Google now pays more than $26 billion annually to maintain was one of the main practices that troubled Mehta in his ruling.

It’s less clear whether the judge will embrace the Justice Department’s contention that Chrome needs to be spun out of Google and Android should be unbundled from the company’s other services.

Trying to break up Google harks back to a similar punishment initially imposed on Microsoft a quarter century ago following another major antitrust trial that culminated in a federal judge deciding the software maker had illegally used his Windows operating system for PCs to stifle competition.

However, an appeals court overturned an order that would have broken up Microsoft, a precedent many experts believe will make Mehta reluctant to go down a similar road with the Google case.