Lainey Wilson was the big winner at last night’s CMA Awards.
She took home the trophy for Female Vocalist of the Year, Album Of The Year and the coveted Entertainer Of The Year award, in addition to the previously announced Musical Event Of The Year and Music Video Of The Year for “wait in the truck” with Hardy.
And while there were some great speeches given last night (you have to watch Jelly Roll’s if you haven’t yet), everything Lainey said has stuck with me and I woke up thinking about it this morning still.
When she got on stage to accept her second trophy for Female Vocalist of the Year, Lainey spoke directly to women and little girls everywhere, encouraging them to get up every morning, look in the mirror, and speak positively about who they are and what they’re made of:
“It’s a good night, it’s a real good night, we’re gonna party tonight! This one right here, y’all. This is for all of the hard working ladies that I know, that I don’t know, I see ya. And also, I just wanna share something with y’all.
For all of you little girls watching and for the ones that are here tonight too. It’s something I’m doing, I’m getting up every single day and I’m looking at myself in the mirror and saying, I am beautiful. I am smart. I am talented. I am Godly. I am fearless. If somebody tells me I can’t do it, hold my beer and watch this.’
Us girls, y’all, we’ve been having to blaze trails from the very, very beginning. and I just wanna say thank you so much for letting me be part of that. And here’s to all the ladies that blaze trails every single dang day of their life.”
If I ever have a daughter, I want her to be just like Lainey Wilson…
And when she stepped up to accept the biggest award of the evening, Entertainer Of The Year, she got pretty emotional as she recalled her journey thus far.
Lainey moved to Music City in a camper trailer and lived in a friends backyard as she worked her ass off to make connections and build a career, which says pretty much everything you need to know about how deserving she is of all of her current, and future, success:
“This is all I’ve ever wanted to do, it’s the only thing I know how to do. We have played, I think at the end of the year we’ll have played about 186 show this year, and we’ve worked our butts off this year and so many years in between.
I’ve been in this town for 12 and a half years, and It finally feels like country music is starting to love me back. I love it with my whole heart. I will say, it’s really, really wild, I guess nine might be my lucky number ‘cuz that’s how many times we were nominated for a CMA this year.
But it’s also the year that I wrote my first song, it’ sthe year that I got my first pair of bell bottoms, it’s the year that my mom and daddy brought me to Nashville for the very first time, and took me to the Grand Ole Opry for the first time.”
And lastly, she spoke about how it was the year her parents brought home a wild horse named Tex, which was very wild and needed breaking.
Lainey explained that they threw her on the back and told her she “better hold on” and even though she cried at times and begged to get off, she pushed through and came out better for it:
“It’s the year that my mom and daddy brought home this horse named Tex, and the horse was wild and it needed breaking. And they put me on the back of that thing and they said, ‘You better hold on, you better ride.’
I’ll tell you what, there were times I was crying and I wanted to get down. ‘I’m like, let me off the back of this thing.’ But yall, every time it would start buckin’, I would hold on a little tighter.
And I think that right there is one of the things that prepared me for this ride ‘cuz it is wild. Thank y’all for letting me be me and thank y’all for giving me this opportunity, thank you Jesus.”
She also thanked her boyfriend, family and people on her team, and I could not think of a better role model for not only women and little girls, but people in general, than Lainey Wilson.
Lainey has grit and determination in spades, and the experience and stories to back it up. Its obviously no easy journey to get where she is now, especially as a woman in a lot of cases, and I find her to be so genuine and an incredibly important role model that so many people can look up to.
She puts her money where her mouth is, so to speak, and that’s certainly the kind of woman I wanna be too.
If you’re any kind of person out there with any sort of dream, big or small, this speech is for you:
The Louisiana native also fittingly took the stage to perform “Wildflowers And Wild Horses”:
