Lainey Wilson may be the newly crowned 2024 ACM Entertainer of the Year, but she’s still the same little girl in Baskin, La. sitting on her rooftop casting her dreams up in the stars.

Before the show, Taste of Country asked Wilson if she’s still dreaming after checking so many career boxes over the last few years.

“I am still dreaming, because the truth is I’ve just — from the beginning I have been a dreamer and I don’t think that will ever stop,” she explains. “I bet you I will be 90 years old, sitting on a couch dreaming about something.”

Related: 2024 ACM Awards Winners: Full List

“I feel like as my career changes and grows, I feel like my dreams kind of change and like doors are opening that I didn’t even know existed, I guess you could say,” she admits. “And that makes me excited. I feel like I’m gonna be able to be creative in a lot of different ways.”

Reflecting on the last year alone, the “Hang Tight Honey” singer has learned that some of those wish list items have opened more doors for her. In a way, her dreams were just the threshold for even larger aspirations.

“It’s like you ask and you shall receive and sometimes tenfold,” she reveals. “And sometimes it’s thing that never in a million years did you even know existed.”

Lainey Wilson Wins Entertainer of the Year at the 2024 ACM Awards

“The past few years for us has just been a complete whirlwind,” she said in her acceptance speech Thursday (May 16). “I’ve been in Nashville for 13 years doing this.”

She proceeded to thank Jesus Christ, her team, her band and the other important people who go to bat for her every day.

“Y’all, I remember being a little girl and I would climb out on the top of our roof – I’d open my window and climb out,” she recounts. “I would count all the stars and I’d see the planes flying over my little town of 200 people and I’d dream about being up there in one of those planes.”

“The funny thing is, I still feel like that little girl, I really do,” she admits. “I still climb out on the roof and I look at the stars, except I feel like I’m a little more eye level with them now.”

Lainey Wilson Feels Like the “Little Sister” in the ACM Entertainer of the Year Category

Wilson gushed about the other nominees in the category, explaining how so many of them have helped her along the way in her career.

“When I look at everybody who is nominated for Entertainer of the Year, I’m like, a lot of these people have helped me,” she shared with Taste of Country ahead of the show. “A lot of these people have taken me out on the road, have written songs with me, encouraged me, answered the phone and like, gave me guidance and have just wrapped their arm around me.”

“I do,” she said when asked if she felt like she was making them proud. “I think I’m like the little sister and they’re like, ‘I knew she was gonna do it.'”