No Brad Paisley? No problem for the three hosts of the 2019 CMA Awards. The show's opening monologue was a joke-filled conversation between Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton and Reba McEntire.

The two former CMA Entertainer of the Year winners and 2019 EOTY nominee recognized that this is a night for the women, but not just the women of country music.

"We're doing it for all the little girls watching tonight," McEntire remarked to a round of applause. Then they got down to the business of entertaining.

After thanking Paisley for "stepping back" to allow the night to be about the women of country (a hint that he could return, perhaps), the one-liners started coming in hot and heavy. It was a celebration of women, but also a chance to poke fun at themselves.

"It's a fog of hair spray and shoes and costume changes," Underwood joked about their dressing room situation. "And for some reason Dolly's rack is so much bigger."

Can you guess what they joked about at this point? It was a quip about Parton's famously large chest, of course — a staple since she first took the CMA stage decades ago. Forty-one years ago she said, "My daddy said that's what I got for putting 50 pounds of mud in a five pound bag" when winning CMA Entertainer of the Year after her dress split.

Of course, there was more at Parton's expense:

"They're big on social media and I'm big on social security," she says. Later McEntire commented how parts of her senior co-host were "barely legal."

Fans expecting the more complicated humor and timing that Paisley and Underwood brought for 11 years got something different in 2019. Much like the opening performance, it was a stand and deliver opening monologue that served mostly as a transition to the show's first award.

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