"This song saved me" — Jelly Roll's emotional speech upon winning Music Event of the Year with Lainey Wilson at the 2024 ACM Awards

On May 16, 2024, Jelly Roll and Lainey Wilson recently won the 2024 Music Event of the Year award for Save Me at the 59th Academy of Country Music Awards. The event was held at The Ford Center at The Star, Frisco, Texas. As they accepted the award, Jelly Roll gave an emotional speech, stating that the song “saved” him.

Jelly Roll said:

"I'm going to try not to get emotional. But, no pun intended. Seriously. This song saved me. I was in a dark place. I wrote it from my soul. And I knew people would connect with it."

Roll and Lainey Wilson released Save Me at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards, and it soon became a hit, topping charts in many countries and reaching Number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100.

He continued:

"One year ago, Lainey Wilson and I stood on this stage and debuted it. This song is a triple-platinum record. I wrote it with a high school friend. We never thought we’d be songwriters. I never thought I’d be standing here. I thought I would die or go to jail and I’m standing here an ACM Award winner. Do you hear what I’m talking about, Texas?"

As Jelly Roll spoke, his duet partner, Lainey Wilson, looked at him and smiled, while his wife, Bunnie XO, was seen teary-eyed in the audience.

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"If I didn't win tonight, it never got what I thought it deserved" — Jelly Roll bags the award at ACM Awards

As Jelly Roll accepted the award, he shared with the audience how he initially created Save Me in 2020 and released it as a single from his album Self Medicated. He then collaborated with Lainey Wilson and re-released it on May 12, premiering it by performing it live at the 2023 Academy of Country Music Awards.

Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason Bradley DeFord, added:

"I always wrote vulnerable music but never to that degree and it just changed my whole life. You've got to remember, I dropped 'Save Me' in the middle of 2020, it was a really dark time, and people connected with it and I get thousands of messages about how much that song has helped people."

He continued:

"This song meant so much to me and I was so emotional because I think tonight was the last night it qualified for any cycle. So if I didn't win tonight, it never got what I thought it deserved."

The Bottle and Mary Jane singer is popular for his singles like Need a Favor, Son of a Sinner, and albums like Strictly Business, No Filter, No Filter 2, A Beautiful Disaster, Ballads of the Broken, and many more.

Furthermore, this is not Jason Bradley DeFord's first time winning an award, as he has previously won the Country Music Association Award for New Artist of the Year, along with three CMT Music Awards in 2003. The singer has also been nominated in two categories at the 2024 Grammy Awards for the same song, Save Me.