The 2022 ACM Awards will be a special occasion for Lainey Wilson in more ways than one.
The singer admits that while she's been invited to the show in the past, she wanted to wait for the right reason to attend: and now she has two with nominations for New Female Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for "Things a Man Oughta Know."
"My friends would be like, 'do you want to go to the ACMs?' But I always said, 'I don't really want to go until I have a reason to be there.' And [it] turns out this year I do," she explains, calling her nominations "mind blowing." "It's still really crazy to me that anybody even knows my name. So I'm just honored to be there."
But the way the singer got there is by writing her truth. Lainey says she pulled the lyrics from her chart-topping hit from a personal place.
"It's a little mind blowing, but it shows you too that if you write what you know, if you write your truth, even if it is super personal...those are things that my daddy taught me," she expresses. "I was writing my story, and if you do that, then you never even know the amount of people who are going to relate to it."
The Louisiana native will be bringing her parents with her to the star-studded ceremony in Las Vegas. "My daddy did not get on an airplane for the first time ever until about two years ago, and it was to go to the rodeo in Vegas. So he's going to feel like a hotshot shot rolling up there," she laughs.
The ACM Awards air live from Allegiant Stadium on March 7 on Amazon Prime Video at 8 p.m. ET.