Welcome to today’s brand of country music—not to be mistaken for fresh-cut Skoal. This year it feels like the jockeying for Contemporary or Traditional Album designation has created a semantic knot that’s taken “open to interpretation” to new levels. Who gets to decide? Submitter? The oft-whispered-about, mysterious “committees”? A Magic 8 Ball? “You say ‘tah-MAY-tow,’ I say ‘tah-MAH-tow,’” but we can’t call the whole thing off.

As with pornography, most people know their version of country when they hear it. If it were my call, Traditional would feature fiddles, steel guitar, influences drawn from swing and honky tonk to bluegrass and sleek Patsy Cline-Ray Price-influenced countrypolitan. This category would include Asleep at the Wheel, Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam and conscientious objector Tyler Childers, whereas Contemporary would delve into music informed by rock, hip-hop and modern pop—jacked up like Jason Aldean, muscular like Lainey Wilson and Ella Langley, effervescent like Megan Moroney.

Childers’ Snipe Hunter (RCA) is going to be in Contemporary, while Eric Church’s impressive, progressive Evangeline vs. the Machine (EMI Nashville) fits nicely into Traditional. But the cherry on top? Texas Monthly cover habitue Charley Crockett’s two Shooter Jennings-produced projects (Island) are vying for Traditional with Dollar a Day and Contemporary with Lonesome Drifter. Will all this survive review? Who knows?

That said, here’s a decent look at who you’re gonna see fighting it out for the final nominations.

Traditional Country Album has strong contenders, old school and modern alike, including George Strait’s Cowboys and Dreamers (MCA), possibly Church’s Evangeline and Texas progressive traditionalist Parker McCollum’s self-titled third album (MCA). Warner Nashville has a cavalcade in Gavin Adcock’s Own Worst Enemy, William Beekman’s Whiskey Lies & Alibis, sister trio The Castellows’ Homecoming and longtime outlaw Jamey Johnson’s Midnight Gasoline. Never dismiss Yoakam, whose Brighter Days (Thirty Tigers) contains the Post Malone banger “I Don’t Know How to Say Good-Bye (Bang Bang Boom Boom).” Nor should you forget traditionalist Zach Top, whose Ain’t in It for My Health (Leo33) has struck a chord with old-school fans and beyond.More thrilling: the father-son match up of Willie Nelson’s The Border (Sony Legacy) against Lukas Nelson’s American Romance (Sony Nashville).

Contemporary Country Album is similarly a festival of modern country’s myriad facets. Beyond Childers’ Snipe Hunter, Contemporary is a collision of big country, cool country, rock country and, well, classic country. Traditionalist Tucker Wetmore’s What Not To (Back Blocks/Mercury/Republic) and Miranda Lambert’s Postcards From Texas (Republic) deliver, as does Kelsea Ballerini’s Patterns (Black River), while CMA and ACM favorite Jordan Davis’ Learn the Hard Way (MCA) and Jon Pardi’s Honky Tonk Hollywood (Capitol Nashville) stand out for the new guard, and Keith Urban’s musicality drives High (Hit Red/Capitol Nashville) into contention. Sony Music Nashville has Brooks & Dunn’s Reboot II, perennial favorite Old Dominion with Barbara and Kane Brown’s The High Road all viably vying. Riley Green looks strong with Don’t Mind If I Do (Nashville Harbor/BMLG). Emerging superstar Bailey Zimmerman’s Different Night, Same Rodeo (Atlantic/Warner Nashville) could also be a factor.

Over at Broken Bow, Jon Loba has the bases covered, from Blake Shelton’s For Recreational Use Only to Jelly Roll’s empowering Beautifully Broken (Broken Bow/Republic), showing the breadth of where country is now.

Intriguing things, beyond Album categories, are happening in Country. Whether it’s Carín León and Kacey Musgraves’ cross-cultural duet “Lost in Translation” (Virgin), the girl-power Reba-Lainey Wilson-Lambert collab “Trailblazer,” Strait and Chris Stapleton’s “Honky Tonk Hall of Fame,” the Miranda-Stapleton ’80s throwback “A Song to Song,” Zimmerman’s “All The Way” with UnitedMasters’ BigXthaPlug, Thomas Rhett and Teddy Swims’ “Something About a Woman” (Big Machine) and Sam Barber’s “Indigo” featuring Avery Anna (Atlantic), the sweep is massive.

Other big mainstream country pairings: Cody Johnson and Carrie Underwood for “I’m Gonna Love You,” (Warner Nashville), Riley Green and Ella Langely’s second helping “Don’t Mind If I Do,” Kane Brown and Jelly Roll’s “Haunted,” Zimmerman and Luke Combs’ earworm “Back Up Plan,” Western-leaning Wyoming resident Ian Munsick and Lainey Wilson’s “Feather in My Hat” and Megan Moroney and Kenny Chesney’s postcard from the road “You Had to Be There.” Look for Old Dominion and MCA’s Brothers Osborne to be the most likely self-contained bands to have a shot in the category, with Red Clay Strays (RCA) an underdog poised to shock and awe.

With so many pairings and events, it would be great for genres that have actual duos and groups to return to a category meant for special collaborations. At this point, musical hook-ups truly comprise their own sub-genre, let alone category.

Other notes worth noting: Columbia has three dynamic songwriting women all vying for Song with Langley for “Weren’t for the Wind,” Jesse Murph offering “Blue Strips” and Moroney (in conjunction with SMN) with “Six Months Later.” Also, these names are showing up in Solo and sometimes Duo/Group categories.

Shaboozey, Empire’s staunch hybridist, follows last year’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” with the much needed “Good News” in Song and Solo, as well as “Amen,” a powerful duet with Jelly Roll.

My other favorite name heading to the ballot is Island’s always-delicious Chappell Roan, whose “The Giver” is in Solo Performance. She may be the only artist this year to be nominated in both Pop and Dance/Electronic with “The Subway.”

Will there be any Big 4 action? Hard to tell. Megan Moroney has had a media run that could give her the visibility for Best New Artist. More impressively, Church’s “Darkest Hour,” written in the aftermath of the horrible flooding in North Carolina and Tennessee, has been submitted in the Harry Belafonte Song for Social Change category.

Trying to call it with this vast a range of artists and fairly undefined “words” is a fool’s game. But once the nominations are revealed, they’ll offer a fascinating look at how country music is seen in terms of the creators.